


through adversity to the stars

by gentleau (iwanna_seeyou_undoit)



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Miscommunication, like.. a lot of it. because it's what im best at and this is nothing if not a projection, more like teammates to friends to ???? to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:01:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26712604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwanna_seeyou_undoit/pseuds/gentleau
Summary: Max and Daniel are both terrible at communicating, but Daniel hugs Max after his win in Barcelona, and that feels like saying enough.Featuring champagne as a bonding tool, the Malaysian clubbing scene being the real DOTD, Daniel’s domesticity kink, and a reluctantly vulnerable Max.
Relationships: Daniel Ricciardo/Max Verstappen
Comments: 84
Kudos: 228





	1. 2016 - watching stars

**Author's Note:**

> Instead of doing my university work, I decided to spend months writing the saga that was red bull racing's 2016-2018 era. 
> 
> The rating might change once i write the last chapter, but everything up until that point is fully finished and set in stone. 
> 
> Please, if you know anyone in this fic either run away now or at least keep it quiet if you stay...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> title from [here](https://genius.com/The-paper-kites-give-me-your-fire-give-me-your-rain-lyrics)

Daniel hugs him after Barcelona. 

Max is sticky with champagne and he can feel a wet spot in the arch of his back where he’d sweat through his fireproofs. His winner’s cap is sitting crooked on his head and his heart is going a mile a minute, his father is somewhere in the garage no doubt waiting to recap every lap, and Daniel is hugging him. 

Max flaps his hands over Daniel’s shoulders, his chin digging awkwardly into the wet heat of Daniel’s neck and then Daniel is stepping back and grinning grinning grinning.

“Great job, mate! I’m gonna have to watch my back.” And it’s missing the viscosity of resentment Max is accustomed to hearing from teammates. 

Daniel is still grinning at him and he hadn’t even made it to the podium. 

Max is floundering. He doesn’t understand how Daniel is so easy about this. 

It’s not that he expected Daniel to be openly resentful towards him, but he knows he wouldn’t be hugging Daniel if their roles were reversed. 

He hopes he doesn’t sound too out of practice when he laughs. 

-

Monaco is a shitshow for Max. 

He dodges his dad in the garage - he can’t stomach hearing his failures read to him like a riot act. 

_What will we do differently next time, Max? We won’t qualify dead last. We don’t send the car into the wall…_

As if he isn’t beating himself up over it, he needs his dad to do it too.

The press are ruthless. Christian’s got a vein that he can’t stop bulging no matter how many times as assures Max that it’s okay, shit happens, every rookie deserves a learning curve. 

He’s slumped in his driver’s room, half out of his fireproofs, overalls hanging around his waist, a fresh polo shirt sitting in his lap. There’s a smudge on the wall opposite him that he’s been staring at for the last ten minutes. 

“You look like you need this more than me.”

Max jumps. “Do you not knock?” He scrambles into the shirt. 

Daniel is propped against the door and holding up his second-place champagne like a white flag. 

And Max is eighteen and thinks wine tastes kind of like vomit, but Daniel is still flushed from the race and he’s changed into dark wash jeans that hang low on his hips and Max wants to be the kind of person who hugs his teammate when he’s done well.

“Nice race,” Max says. And then he just sits there staring up at Daniel, wondering why anything else he can think of to say sounds cruel. 

Daniel rocks forward on the balls of his feet, so far forward Max starts tensing to catch him. 

“You gonna invite me in or…”

“Oh! Yes! Uh… come in.” His sweaty fireproofs are taking up the only spare space on the sofa. Daniel sits right on top of them. 

“You know,” Daniel starts, and Max can’t stand the thought of hearing empty platitudes from him - that’s it’s okay he DNFed, he’s still finding his feet, after a race like last week no one even cares about this one. 

“It’s okay to take a few days to be pissed off at yourself. But champagne tastes the same whether you hit a wall or not, so…” He knocks the bottle against Max’s thigh. It sloshes sadly against the sides, almost empty. At least half of what’s left is probably Daniel’s saliva. 

Max takes it anyway. 

Daniel knocks their elbows together then springs to his feet, startling Max into a wet inhale. He’s still coughing, wet-eyed and breathless, when Daniel drags him up off the sofa and into his chest. 

“My public need me to put in an appearance, so I better go. But don’t sulk too long. Text me, yeah? I expect to see you back on the horse by Wednesday.”

What the fuck does that mean? 

Text him? 

About what? 

_Hey mate. Just thought you should know i only cried a little._

For the record, Max doesn’t give into frustrated tears when he gets home but he kicks a dint in the side of his kitchen bin and then passes out for ten hours straight. 

He wakes up regretting not saying anything back to Daniel. He should have at least thanked him for the alcohol. 

He remembers in the shower that he’s got permission to text Daniel outside of the standard ‘meeting w CH 10am’. 

> _I’d say thanks for the bubbley but think it was just mostly uour spit_ [sent 11:01]
> 
> **It’s ok you can say you liked swapping spit i won’t tell [delivered 12:20]**

-

> **Do we think dr helmut was closer to an aneurism today than normal? [delivered 14:23]**
> 
> **I swear I saw actual steam come out his ears [delivered 14:23]**

It starts after team meetings. Max stops disappearing into his driver’s room at the first opportunity and starts hanging back in the corridor, waiting for Dan to wrap up his conversation. 

Even when they disagree in debriefs, Daniel meets him outside with a grin and a throwaway comment about Christian. Most of the time he pats his stomach and drags Max off to catering. 

Max spends more time laughing between Wednesday and Sunday than he’s ever done. 

-

> **I saw you steal the last donut from catering [delivered 13:52]**
> 
> **The jig is up!! [delivered 13:52]**

Max learns that Daniel doesn’t really like sweets. 

“How am I supposed to trust you if you don’t even like sugar?!”

“Oh yee of little faith. Come on Maxie. Have I ever let you down before?”

Max consciously avoids thinking too deeply about that question and rolls his eyes. “I bet you probably don’t even like Red Bull. You’re a terrible brand ambassador.”

Daniel grabs for his earlobe. Max is quick enough to avoid the pinch but he can’t dodge Dan’s hand entirely. His breath catches in his throat at the brush of fingers along his jaw, and he has to excuse himself to the catering table to get himself under control.

\- 

> **Last one to the lobby gets strategy 2 [delivered 07:05]**

Daniel’s hotel room is always closer to the elevators. The competition is fundamentally rigged. Max has taken to tackling Daniel around the waist, bracing one hand against the open doors, and pushing him back out. 

It works about thirty-three percent of the time. 

He does also end up careering into innocent guests, thinking Daniel must already be in the elevator, yelling obscenities and having to backtrack and apologise at pace. 

More than once, Daniel has arrived in the lobby shame-faced and trailing several smug middle aged women behind him, so Max knows it’s not just him. 

**-**

> **I told catering we’re putting our feet down - we want full fat yoghurt or we’re walking [delivered 11:37]**

Daniel doesn’t like sweets but he inhales dairy like it’s going out of fashion. 

Personally, dairy tends to aggravate Max’s stomach a little. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t bitch to Daniel about catering trying to pass ‘Greek _style_ ’ yoghurt off as the real thing. Since Daniel just laughs at him and continues to shovel the stuff into his face, Max assumes it’s another one of those things Daniel accepts as water under the bridge. 

And then, barely two hours later, his phone is buzzing against his thigh.

-

> **Gday P2 Austria! What do we think - does second place champers taste different when you’re not DNF? [delivered 17:50]**

Because Daniel is a better person than Max, he thanks him in person for sharing his champagne. 

There’s a note on Max’s phone with a list of things he’s thought of saying to Daniel if their roles were reversed but he’ll lose his mask of plausible deniability if he says any of them outloud. 

Instead of telling Daniel it’s his turn to try Max’s spit, he just shrugs and stares at the play of Daniel’s knuckles under his skin. 

-

And it’s normal, right? That Max watches Daniel warm-up before the race. 

Their driver’s rooms are directly across from each other and Daniel would close the door if he didn’t want Max to see. 

Max is only watching so he can measure himself against Daniel’s reaction times and make sure Michael isn’t introducing any stretches Max doesn’t know about. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Daniel is so competent. 

He’s an athlete at the pinnacle of his career. 

But there’s a steady-footedness to his concentration that Max envies. It’s like he doesn’t _have_ to be concentrated on what he’s doing, he could be writing a shopping list in his head or planning his week off and there wouldn’t be a difference. 

Warms-ups for Max are a different beast entirely. 

Every sit-up is an effort to prove that he’s fully dedicated to this, that he’s gunning for a championship, that he deserves to be here. The tennis balls sometimes fall too close to the ground, and Max has to crouch to catch them because he’s always thinking about what the _next one_ is going to do. 

Daniel on the other hand… Daniel always catches them because he lets himself stay in the moment. 

He’s not fastforwarding through his own life. 

-

He expects the texting to taper off between Hockenheim and Spa. Daniel always makes a big deal about how much he misses his family and friends during the season, so he expects him to drop off the map when they get to the summer break. 

Instead, he wakes up at two am to piss, and glances at his phone. He has eleven new messages and one missed call from Daniel. His adrenaline slams itself right into panic mode - no one messages that many times in the middle of the night unless someone has died. 

> **Socially acceptable to take your shoes off in business class? Correct answers only. [delivered 01:20]**
> 
> **The correct answer was yes. [delivered 01:20]**
> 
> **Don’t worry… I kept my socks on** **😉** **[delivered 01:20]**
> 
> **Faced with a choice between Star Wars and The Revenant… which do i want to watch the least? [delivered 01:20]**
> 
> **Nevermind. Missing you too much. Watching Mad Max. [delivered 01:20]**
> 
> **Pro-tip: bubbly wine and turbulence don’t mix well. Take it from the woman across from me. Lovely sheila. Also called Sheila funnily enough. Got chatting after she’d finished chundering her guts up [delivered 01:21]**
> 
> **Thinking of giving up F1 and becoming professional vomit catcher [delivered 01:21]**
> 
> **I got on teh wine too. Make s 13 hr fligh t about 3 hrs longe.r [delivered 01:21]**
> 
> **Touch down Los Angeles [delivered 01:21]**
> 
> **Oh shit. Did all these send at once? [delivered 01:23]**
> 
> **_YOU HAVE (1) MISSED CALL FROM:_** DANIEL (RED BULL)
> 
> **FUCK. I just realised what time it probably is in Monaco... oops [delivered 01:49]**

Reading them does nothing to calm Max’s heart. Instead of worrying that Daniel is dead in a ditch somewhere, his brain is one big ????? Because… Daniel chose to spend his long-haul flight texting _him_? 

While he was clearly joking about the movie, it still made him think of Max. And then he _called him_. 

What is Max expected to do with this? 

Texting him back is out of the question since Dan has acknowledged the time difference. 

He’s too wired to go back to sleep, though. Maybe he could reply in his notes app and copy it to messages in the morning. Is that too ridiculous? 

Max mulls it over in the bathroom. He stares into the toilet bowl so long he almost forgets what he’s there for. He flushes, rinses his hands, picks at a pimple on his chin. 

_Nevermind. Missing you too much._

He scrolls through the messages again. 

There’s a winking face. 

_Missing you..._

Max opens Instagram. Dan hasn’t posted anything. 

He closes it. 

His phone tells him it’s half past two. 

He types and retypes a response half a dozen times before he realises Daniel can probably see him typing. 

_…too much._

As if there are levels of missing him. 

He shuts his phone off. Runs a blunt nail around the edge of the screen protector. Unlocks it again. 

Daniel’s contact name is still just _Daniel: Red Bull_. Their text chain now contains an emoji.

He said I miss you. 

He texted him drunk. 

He told him about Sheila’s puke. 

This warrants an upgrade. He dithers. Rejects his first few ideas as too revealing. 

_Daniel (_ _👃_ _)_

-

Max googles the time difference between Monaco and LA when he wakes up again. He purposefully waits until it’s after four in the afternoon to text Daniel back. 

> _I hope you got Sheilas number. She sounds fun [sent 16:07]_

He’s planned a string of nonsense texts to pay Daniel back for the heart attack he gave him last night.

> **I don’t think youre her type mate [delivered 16:07]**

What the _fuck_.

> _Isn’t it like 1 in the morning there?? [sent 16:07]_
> 
> **Time is a social construct made to keep us complacent [delivered 16:08]**
> 
> **And jet lag is a bitch [delivered 16:08]**
> 
> _I don’t even know what that word means but your wrong. Time is my friend it keeps track im winning or not [sent 16:08]_
> 
> **Any plans for the afternoon? [delivered 16:08]**

They’ve progressed to small talk. The last person to ask Max about his plans was his mother. They text back and forth until Daniel sends a string of z’s. 

> **We should set up a FaceTime some time. Tom Hardy has nothing on you** **😉** **[delivered: 16:58]**

All Max can manage in reply is a thumbs up. He presses his face into his pillow and pretends the gnawing in his stomach is hunger. 

-

“Heeey!” Daniel’s face beams up at him. “How’s it hangin’?”

“Slightly to the left,” Max reponds unthinkingly. He’s rewarded when Daniel cackles back at him. 

“Touché, mate. Touché.”

“You have a tan already? Or you got extra vain without me to control you and you bought one of those Kardashian selfie light cases.”

Daniel preens for the camera, primping his hair. “I put on makeup just for you. Do you like it?” His eyelashes flutter and Max clears his throat, grateful he’s sitting down and Daniel can’t see below his neck. “No, but seriously. You should get outside more. Get some colour on those pasty white legs.”

He asks Daniel how he’s liking LA, and is treated to an enthusiastic retelling of Daniel’s cross-state road-trip. Daniel asks how Monaco is behaving in his absence and Max bitches about his neighbours for a while. 

Their easy back and forth is interrupted by a knock at Max’s door. 

“Ooooh, booty call!” Daniel’s eyebrows look like caterpillars on acid. Max tells him as much. 

“No _booty call_ ,” Max scoffs. “Only if the takeaway driver counts.”

“I dunno. You can tell me when you see him.”

Max’s mouth goes dry. _What exactly is Daniel implying?_ He stammers at his phone until the knock repeats itself. “I better go get that… Goodnight I guess. Or it’s good morning for you, isn’t it?”

“Nah, just put me on the table. I can entertain myself while you two have fun.”

Max is thankful for the excuse to not have to reply to that. He leaves Daniel staring up at his ceiling while he answers the door. He tips the driver, takes his time in the kitchen, returning to the sofa with a beer and his dinner. 

“So,” Daniel is talking before Max is even in frame. “Was he worth it?”

“He was, like, fifty!”

Daniel shrugs. “Hey, far be it for me to judge. You’re into what you’re into.” Max takes a bite of his burger to avoid having to think about that. “Anyway, I thought you didn’t like beer.”

Max doesn’t bother swallowing his food before shaking his head. “Yeah, but this is one of the sugary ones.”

“Sugar beer for sugar baby. I see.”

-

When they hang up Max changes Daniel’s contact to _Dickhead_ 💙.

-

Daniel returns to Monaco for a couple of days before Spa.

He texts Max from the airport, asking if he’s had his dinner yet. Max tells him he hasn’t, but he’s been craving a pizza all week. 

> **I’m due my cheat meal too, now you mention it. If you want company…? [delivered 18:22]**

Max texts him his address and then rips through his apartment, bin bag in hand. _How did it get so messy? The cleaner came only a few days ago._ He kicks his dirty washing behind the laundry door and pulls it closed. 

> **I’ve been to your apartment before. We live in the same building [delivered 18:24]**

Looking around his living room, it now looks like he’s _tried_ to clean. Which is worse than having Dan see him living in a pigsty. He retrieves a mostly-clean sweatshirt from the laundry pile to drape over the back of the sofa. There’s an empty bottle of beer at the top of the rubbish bag that he fishes out and sets on one end of the coffee table. 

Satisfied that his apartment looks sufficiently lived in, Max fucks around on his phone, pulling up several menus in case Daniel doesn’t know them by heart like he does. 

He’s expecting the knock on his door, but he’s not expecting the sight of Daniel, fresh off the plane, dressed in black sweatpants and an over-long t-shirt. He’s juggling his carry on bag and a stack of pizza boxes. “Order for a, uh… Max Vershtappen?”

Max stares at him. 

“I know you were expecting your booty call, but I’m your pizza delivery boy for tonight. May I come in?” He doesn’t wait for Max to answer, hip-checking him out of the centre of the doorway. “You cleaned for me! I’m flattered.” Max still hasn’t said anything. He’s following the play of Daniel’s ass through his pants. Daniel catches Max’s eye. “You forget I’ve seen the state of this place on FaceTime, mate.”

Max pushes the furious embarrassment down down down. He refuses to blush. He sidles up against Daniel’s side. “What did you order me?” He opens the box without bothering to wait for an answer. The cardboard rasps against the stubble under Dan’s chin. “Wow, lucky me.” He crams a slice in his mouth, collapses spread-eagled on the sofa. “What have I done right to deserve this?”

Daniel dumps the boxes on the coffee table and steps over Max’s legs, knocking their knees together and falling onto the sofa so close his hip rests against the soft meat of Max’s waist. He waves his slice at Max. “It’s your reward for being such a good teammate.”

His face is so close to Max’s. He smells a little like the recycled air of long-distance travel. There’s a tiny patch of dry skin peeking out of his right eyebrow. Max has the strangest urge to lick his thumb and wet it down for him. 

He speaks before his body has a chance to do something terrible like follow through. “Oh, yeah, I’m your lovely, caring, beautiful teammate. You’re welcome.” It’s a joke (it’s a joke!) but it comes out sounding too sincere, even to Max’s ears. 

Daniel giggles and stretches out against his side of the sofa. His shirt rides up, exposing a strip of smooth, tanned stomach. Max’s mouth fills with saliva. 

\- 

Max has never spent so much time thinking about someone’s thighs in his whole life. (Not even that one summer when he was fifteen and developed an embarrassing fixation on Mrs Incredible.) 

It’s not just Daniel’s stomach that came back from LA tanned, and the weather seems determined to prove that to Max. Daniel wears shorts every single day. 

Max spends his birthday week frustrated and confused and sticky with humid sweat. It’s like Daniel can’t sit in a chair like a normal person. His leg is _always_ folded up, his shorts riding high and tight around his thigh. 

Christian has to repeat himself several times to get a response from Max in team meetings Daniel is invited to. 

_How does the skin where the tattoos are look so smooth? Would it feel the same as the other, bare one?_

His brain short circuits the day he realises Dan would have had to shave his thigh to get the tattoos. 

He loses several hours on Friday night scrolling through Daniel’s Instagram, searching for a picture. The best he gets is a photo of Daniel perched atop a steel bridge, his thigh mostly obscured by his arm. It’s not enough to tell how far up the ink goes. 

But that’s fine. It’s _fine_. Max doesn’t know what he’d have done with the information if he’d found it. 

-

Even before the double podium in Malaysia, they’d had plans to hit the town after the race. 

Daniel sneaks up behind Max while he’s stuffing his fireproofs into a wash bag, catching Max around the waist and lifting him off his feet. Max catches his unmanly shriek behind his teeth and scrabbles at Daniel’s hands. They’re sticky with champagne. 

“Good to see the shoey hasn’t killed you yet.” Daniel’s voice is gravelly against his ear. He puts Max down but doesn’t step away. His chest is a furnace against Max’s back.

“If you think about it, it’s very unfair that you made me come second on my birthday and then you made me drink out of your shoe also.” Max is glad no one has yet learned how to read minds. Because the thoughts he’d been having on the podium about the taste of Daniel’s sweat make him flush hot, even now. 

Daniel lets Max turn against him so he can meet his eyes. “I promise I’ll make it up to you tonight. Buy you all the pink drinks your heart desires.” 

They share a car back to the hotel, Max letting his bare leg rest dangerously close to Daniel’s. “Gimme twenty minutes to shower and change. Meet you in your room?” Daniel says in the elevator, standing too close and breathing right into Max’s ear. They’ve both had a lot of champagne. 

Max had been planning on wearing a simple black t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Call it the alcohol or the adrenaline of the race or the thrill of knowing that Daniel is a few doors down doing the same thing, but Max changes his mind when he’s staring into his suitcase. 

The white button-up is for special occasions, but what is this if not a special occasion? It’s his nineteenth birthday. He just finished second in Malaysia. Besides, it’ll look good with the new watch his mum bought him. 

He’s fumbling over the last couple of buttons by his throat when he opens the door for Daniel.

Daniel whistles, casting what, from anyone else, Max would call an appreciative glance over his body. But it’s Daniel. It can’t be right. 

Max self-consciously pulls his collar away from his throat, watching as Daniel tracks the movement. “I thought our podium deserved something a little more… fancy than a t-shirt.”

Daniel is silent for a while, face untranslatable. “Fancy is a good look on you.” Max pats the pockets of his jeans, checking he’s got his phone and his wallet. “Shall we?” Daniel steps aside to usher Max through the open door. Max doesn’t remember much of the car journey to the club, he’s too busy not watching Daniel’s reflection in the window. 

He feels like he blinks and suddenly he’s five drinks deep and it’s two am and he spots Daniel across the room, dancing with a girl in a tight gold dress, and that’s just _not_ going to fly, not on Max’s birthday. 

Max is the only golden person Daniel is allowed to dance with. 

He leaves the girls he’s dancing with (so he’s a hypocrite. Sue him). He orders two beers, because he’s trying to impress Daniel, and besides, he’s drunk enough he doesn’t really mind the taste anymore. 

He pushes his way through the throng of people to Daniel, being pretty rude by basically inserting his body between Daniel’s chest and the girl, putting his back to her and not moving until he’s sure she’s gone. 

He passes the beer to Daniel and grins at him. He’s so close to his face. 

“You bought me this? I should be the one buying you drinks, birthday boy.” 

“You won today, though. You can buy us the next round!” He shouts into Daniel’s ear. His shirt is sticking to his back and he’s undone another couple of buttons, chest naked almost to his navel. Daniel keeps moving his body to the beat, writhing his shoulders in a way that makes Max’s mouth dry. He takes a sip of beer. 

The music changes to something deep and pulsating. Max closes his eyes, raises the bottle to his mouth, and focuses on making his chin stick out, his throat appear longer. It’s impossible over the volume in the club but he swears he hears Daniel groan. 

They don’t separate for the rest of the night. Max dances his little heart out, riding a pleasant buzz of alcohol and endorphins. He’s nineteen and he’s dancing with a pretty boy who keeps buying him drinks and singing in his ear. He wants more. 

He times it to when the couple next to them dance a little too close. It’s dark enough that Daniel can’t see that Max fakes his stumble, that he tips himself backward into Dan’s chest just to feel the warmth of him. 

Emboldened when Daniel doesn’t move away, Max reaches back with his free hand to grip Daniel’s elbow. The hair there is slick with sweat and Max clenches his fingers. He takes a deep breath and grinds his hips back into Daniel. 

There’s a brief, heart-stopping moment where Daniel freezes and Max thinks he’s gone too far, but then Daniel’s laugh brushes against the nape of his neck, smokey rough from drink and a night of shouting over the music. His hips push forward and Max feels his belt buckle like a shot of ice water against the small of his back. 

Daniel lets go of his hip to stroke up his arm and pluck Max’s glass from his hand. 

There’s a sharp shock of cool air against Max’s back as Daniel leans away to put their empty drinks on a table nearby and then he’s back, a long sinewy pressure pressed flat against Max. His hand returns to its place on Max’s hip and Max almost chokes on his tongue when the other one winds its way in front of him and up, to cup his shoulder. 

Max’s eyes shutter closed when he feels Dan’s thumb dip in and out of the hollow of his clavicle. He moans and hopes it’s covered by the bass. 

Daniel smells spicy and sweet, cologne and the drink Max spilled on him a few songs ago. He hasn’t stopped smiling all night, not since Max pushed between him and that girl. 

_Take that,_ he thinks at the memory of her, unexpectedly vicious. _I get to make him smile._

 _Oh shit_ , chases that thought. _This isn’t normal teammate stuff._ There’s more to this than getting a kick out of making Daniel laugh, it’s more than wondering what it feels like to get a tattoo, more than simple friendly feelings. 

All night, every single one of Max’s nerves has been thrilling at the hard line of Daniel’s body behind him. Strong and sure and unmistakably _male_. 

It’s not that Max has never thought about what it would be like, being with a guy. But it’s always been hypothetical. 

He’s never thought about it with someone he knows in person. 

He’s been dancing around the thought for months, but Max finally has to face facts. He’s not just watching Daniel as a teammate any more. Maybe he never was. 

It doesn’t have to mean anything. Even if he likes Daniel like _that_ , he wouldn’t act on it. It’s just something fun to think about. Nothing serious that he needs to introspect. 

Max swallows the sudden lump in his throat, gives his head a quick shake to clear his thoughts, and rocks it back onto Daniel’s shoulder. 

Daniel is shouting along with the song, his hands still strong and sure against Max. Max lets himself grin. He rocks up onto his toes, rolls his hips back, waits for Daniel’s breath to catch, does it again. 

In the taxi back to the hotel, Daniel can’t keep his hands off Max. He runs curious fingers over the links of Max’s watch, laughing when Max flinches when he brushes against ticklish skin, eyes flashing with something dark and focused when he closes his thumb and middle finger around the delicate bones of his wrist. 

Max wiggles his hand out of Daniel’s grasp and the big tactile idiot grins and slides their palms together. He rubs nonsense patterns onto the back of Max’s hand. Max swears he catches him repeating the number 3 over and over. 

Daniel is humming something that sounds vaguely familiar, something he’s definitely heard in the top 40. Daniel hiccups, soft with drink and Max can’t stop himself from giving his hand a quick squeeze. 

The car rounds a corner and Daniel tips over onto Max’s shoulder. His mouth lands just above Max’s collar and his breath is warm and wet and Max can feel the slightly rough skin of his lower lip. 

_Yeah_ , he thinks as Daniel pays the driver. _It was never just normal teammate stuff._

\- 

Max wakes up with a pounding headache. 

His clothes from the night before are in a pile at the end of his bed and he remembers everything with crystal clear clarity. He’s grateful he and Daniel don’t have the same flight home. He couldn’t stomach sitting next to him for the twenty something hours it takes to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Nice. 

Because Max’s revelation from the night before is all well and good, but it’s Daniel. His teammate. His friend. It’s not okay to watch him like that. Japan is going to be close quarters, they’re sharing a driver’s room, so he has approximately three days to get himself under control.

-

A savage part of Max is glad when he’s forced to retire in Austin. 

Suzuka had been awkward but not unbearable. Max finished second and used having his father around as an excuse to duck out of a post-race celebration with Daniel. The promo they’d done in Tokyo had smoothed a little of the tension, reminded him that he could be normal around Daniel despite it all. 

But Max is feeling prickly and exposed in Austin. He only has himself to blame when he boxes and the team isn’t ready for him. 

“Autopilot,” he says when he’s asked about it. He knows better than to let his personal life trespass onto the track with him. 

When his gearbox fails he thinks _okay, at least it wasn’t me who fucked my race up after all._ He’s ready to retreat to his driver’s room, have a sulk, and text Daniel well done for the podium. But then he hears Daniel say he’s disappointed about where Max stopped the car, and his brain boils. 

He storms through the paddock, not caring if the media decide to spin it into another mad Max moment. He’s not even angry, he’s embarrassed, but of course that circles back around to being angry he’s embarrassed. 

The hot anger fades after a day and while Max’s stomach still turns in on itself when he sees Daniel, the memory of Sunday’s bitter fury is a balm. As if it hadn’t been obvious before, Daniel’s comments remind Max that he doesn’t think about Max like that. Not at all. 

They might be friends, they might be closer than the rest of the grid, but they’re nothing else. 

It doesn’t matter how cool Max thinks Daniel is, doesn’t matter how long he spends hanging around Daniel’s driver’s room, hoping to catch a glimpse of burnished skin. 

Yes, Max wants to hold his hand, wants Daniel to kiss him, wants all of it and more. But it doesn’t matter. 

It’s never going to happen. 

Max can (and will) repress it. 

He’ll be fine (they’ll be fine). 

-

Daniel has definitely noticed that Max is acting differently. 

He keeps catching Daniel giving him long, searching glances whenever they’re in the same room. 

Daniel corners him after a strategy meeting. “Is everything okay with you? Victoria and your mum all good?” It’s ridiculous that it means something to Max - the things Daniel doesn’t say. 

He nods, clearing his throat. “Uh, yeah. Yeah! No, everything’s good! Just not… not sleeping too well.” 

Daniel’s face scrunches in sympathy. “I get that. I can’t believe when I was a kid I used to dream about sleeping in a different hotel room every night! What I wouldn’t give just to have one night’s sleep in my own bed, right?” 

Max knows what he means. There’s a crisp perfection to hotel beds that can make them feel pretty lonely. 

Max just happens to be facing down the problem that he’s pretty sure even his own bed would feel lonely, too. 

-

Mexico is better after that conversation. 

The team paints their faces like skeletons. Max qualifies third and Daniel gets a belated podium, and Max finds him in the garage afterwards to share his third-place champagne. 

Daniel hugs him good night, texts him a string of laughing emojis after he’s watched Max and Sebastian’s post-race interviews. 

> **I can’t believe you called him a child lol [delivered 20:41]**

Max sends a joking reply back and avoids his social media, where the media are back to playing up their favourite storyline where Max is the kamikaze young gun without a sensible head on his shoulders. Usually, when he feels like this, he’d crash in Daniel’s hotel room and they’d watch a stupid movie and polish off the little alcohol bottles in the minibar. 

That’s not an option Max let’s himself consider anymore. 

He has to move past this. 

But his hotel bed feels larger than usual and he’s lonely and no one is around to see that he’s scrolling through Daniel’s instagram. 

Again.

-

Max is elated after Brazil. He’s covered in champagne and he’s freezing in his wet overalls but he’s thrilled. He’s finally got another podium under his belt, and it’s enough to get his father off his back for the rest of the season. 

He knows Daniel is going to search him out after the race - they’re back to texting regularly now that Max feels like he has himself under control again. 

He can hear Daniel joking around with his engineers so he’s not surprised when Daniel sticks his head into his driver’s room. He is _not_ expecting Daniel to snake a freezing cold hand down the back of Max’s fresh dry shirt. 

He yelps, twisting in place to slap at Dan’s wrist and glare him down. “What the fuck!?” 

Daniel cackles and Max notes that he’s in a dry set of clothes too. He’s carrying his wet race gloves, though, the dickhead. He’d kept his hands cold on purpose. 

He gives into Daniel’s rough-housing, letting him hit the cap off his head and retaliating by rubbing his soaking wet fireproofs in his face. When Daniel leaves the room with a parting laugh and a final cheeky flash of teeth, Max pretends that the head to toe goosebumps covering him are from the cold. 

\- 

The last race of the year is always fun. Regardless of where he finishes, there’s the combined rush of it being a night race, of knowing the size of the party they’re going to throw afterwards. Last day of school jitters, Daniel calls it. 

Their PR team decide to round the year off by getting them to interview each other and Max is glad that he’s been texting with _Dickhead_ 💙 basically non-stop for the last week and a half because he couldn’t sit that close to Daniel if the last thing he remembered was Daniel’s mouth on his neck. 

Max has heard Daniel talk about him in interviews before, but he’s never been face to face with the sincerity of Daniel saying that, despite his age, he thinks Max is _a natural_ driver. It’s not even the words he says, it’s the tone of his voice, the way he clearly measures every word before saying it, the eye contact he holds with Max throughout. It’s all Max can do to not squirm in his seat, and keep his face blank of emotion. 

The residual tension in his body fades about halfway through. Daniel wiggles around on the sofa until he’s comfortable, and Max lets his answers get a bit more philosophical. 

It all goes a bit tits up when Daniel assumes he doesn’t have to shave yet, and then boggles when Max says he does it every three days. 

He tilts his face toward Daniel when he says it, not even thinking the action through. Daniel’s eyes dart to Max’s fingers on his own jaw and there’s _some sort_ of tension hanging between them that Max can’t name. 

And then Daniel bends his torso over the back of the sofa, hugging himself into it and giggling, and the tension breaks. They wrap it up, still giggling. 

Daniel texts him the night before quali. 

> **Didn’t see much hair on your chin when we were filming so i assume tonight is day three? [delivered 19:17]**

Max is in bed when he reads the message. He _does_ need to use the bathroom, actually. Once he’s there, he might as well take the time to get rid of the thin layer of stubble. He snaps a picture of himself, face mostly obscured by shaving cream, and clicks send before he can second-guess himself. 

Barely one minute later...

> **Handsome** **😉** **[delivered 19:27]**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Daniel hums in the taxi is Hands To Myself..


	2. 2017 - I've never seen stars this bright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’ve finally written the last chapter, so I’m thinking a chapter a day?
> 
> title from [here](https://genius.com/Drax-project-catching-feelings-lyrics)

It’s easy, over the winter break, to pack away the part of himself that wonders what Daniel’s beard would feel like against his skin. 

Going back to Holland sends Max straight back to his childhood. Daniel was right: moving away from home at such a young age did force him to grow up quickly. But no one ever said anything about what happens when you go  _ back  _ home. 

When his mum asks tactfully, over the phone, how many people she should be shopping for, Max assures her it’s just him. When his father assumes Max hasn’t mentioned any relationships because he’s got several women on the go at once, he laughs and changes the subject. 

Victoria watches him carefully but thankfully doesn’t say anything. She waggles her eyebrows at him, shoving her phone in his face and demanding to know who the girl commenting on all his posts is. He tells her he’s got no clue and he wouldn’t be interested in getting involved with a creepy stalker fan even if he did. 

He spends countless nights in town with his friends and girls in heels so tall he has to lean up to kiss them. His mum asks him one day if he would like to have the house to himself for the night and he flushes so hard he feels light-headed. 

It’s not that he stops thinking about Daniel entirely - they still text fairly regularly, Daniel showing off the endless Australian sunshine - but the distance lets him convince himself that the Max who preened at the thought of Daniel’s attention was just bored and getting the thrill of the unknown confused with actual desire. 

-

By the time he sees Daniel again at winter testing, Max has had several months to reconcile the thoughts in his head with the reality of living with Daniel as his teammate. 

His clear-headed surety falls apart almost as soon as he sees Daniel. Australia has been good to him. His tan has deepened, he’s grown his hair out a little, and there’s a spring in his step that Max hadn’t even realised was missing at the end of last year. 

It doesn’t help that the first time Daniel sees Max, he lifts him several inches off the ground in a bear hug. Max dishes out the expected complaints, smacks at Daniel’s shoulders, and doesn't acknowledge the thought that they feel bigger than the last time he’d touched them. 

Daniel keeps an appraising hand on Max’s arm when he puts him down. “I didn’t think it was possible, but I think you might actually have gotten  _ whiter  _ over the break!” 

And just like that, they’re away. Max swears at him and calls him names, feigns pushing him into the path of a slow-moving forklift, spikes his water bottles with detergent. 

It takes a couple of races before Max works up the self-confidence to admit, in the privacy of his own thoughts, that he’d been deluding himself trying to pretend he doesn’t want his hands on Daniel (and vice versa). He still likes girls well enough - they’re safe, and it’s easy to let his brain shut off and just  _ feel  _ when he’s touching them. 

He doesn’t think he’s gay. Not all the way, at least. 

But he can’t deny that he hasn’t thought about how Daniel would look kneeling between Max’s thighs and what it would be like to get his legs around Daniel’s waist. 

For the most part it’s okay. He has the reminder that  _ Daniel doesn’t think about you like that _ to fall back on. Plus, Max’s face has finally lost the bulk of its baby fat so it’s easier for him to pick up girls. It means Max gets the double thrill of sharing a car with Daniel to the club, and then dipping the moment Daniel starts getting a little too handsy with someone. 

He still hates how easy it is for Daniel to make him blush, but he finally feels like he’s getting his feet under himself. 

When Daniel says something suggestive in interviews, Max is ready with a dirty comment to throw right back at him. 

When Daniel  _ doesn’t  _ disappear after the first girl in a short dress he meets, Max dances too close, looking Daniel in the eye the whole time, making sure he knows that Max is intentional about it, that it’s their inside joke, that they’re playing it up for the press. 

Daniel plays right along. 

-

He laughs when he sees his name in Max’s phone. 

“You seriously have me saved as Dickhead? That’s a bit fucking rude, mate. All I ever am is nice to you!” He says it with the full, shit-eating sincerity of a man who has just knocked a cup of strawberry ice cream into Max’s lap. 

Max scoops up a handful of half-melted ice cream and rubs his hand down Daniel’s face. With his other hand, he presents his phone screen. “I put the blue heart as well, see? So really I’m quite lovely.”

Daniel recovers magnificently from the mess in his hair. “Not when you look at what your name is on my phone.” He says it with such pride that Max’s stomach lurches at all the ways Daniel could top a blue heart. 

When he actually  _ sees  _ Daniel’s phone, he blushes so hard he thinks he actually might burst a blood vessel. 

**_Sugar Baby_ ** . 

Daniel’s cackle follows him even as Max storms out of the lunch room. 

-

The thing is sometimes Max thinks he sees Daniel looking back. 

He thought at first it was just brotherly fondness, just Daniel doing his best to be protective and provide Max with a stable rock in the middle of the chaos of the media circuit. But it’s not just that. It  _ can’t  _ be. 

Not when he sees the look on Daniel’s face when Max strips out of his jumper and his shirt rides up, not when the look comes out when Max is dozing across the aisle from him on the plane, not when the look appears watching Max chat a girl up in a club. 

And sometimes… the things Daniel  _ says _ make Max’s stomach curl and his shoulders heat up and it’s like he’s hurtling 300kph into a wall upside down and without a seat belt, and he has to stamp on his own brakes hard hard  _ hard _ . 

If Max was more sure of himself, of his - he hesitates to call them ‘feelings’ but what else are they? - he would be complaining endlessly about Daniel. 

It’s not fair, is the thing. He keeps drawing close to Max and then pulling back, away, putting space between them and parading a string of women through the hallway of the Red Bull hotel. 

It feels like they’re playing a game of chicken where Max keeps looking at Daniel, and Daniel keeps looking back, but Max is the only one who knows they’re playing. Surely friends don’t look at friends that way. 

If he was a girl, Max would call him a tease. 

Maybe if he knew how guys like him did this sort of stuff, he wouldn’t be as confused. 

Maybe it’s an Australian thing. Max has heard people say things about how European guys are a bit more friendly with each other, perhaps it’s even more so in Australia. 

-

Here’s the thing, Max is a nineteen year old boy in a high adrenaline sport. He’s running on a hair trigger. Sometimes he catches Christian Horner in the right light and he gets a little hard. It’s not like it’s  _ difficult  _ to turn Max on, is the point.

Max had clocked Daniel’s tendency to talk with his hands from the moment he met him and he’s developed a kind of reflex to avoid getting a hand in the face in interviews. Sometimes, though, he isn’t fast enough or he misjudges Daniel’s trajectory and he gets punted in the shoulder. It’s fine, he just pushes Daniel back and moves on with his life. 

They’re in the Red Bull lunch room as they so often are, killing time between interviews, in Silverstone when  _ It  _ happens. 

Daniel has been in an increasingly animated exchange across the room for the past twenty minutes and Max has totally lost the thread of the conversation. He stands up to get a refill on his drink at the exact same time that Daniel throws a hand out and smacks Max directly in the crotch. 

It’s like time stops. 

Max’s breath catches in his throat and his vision darkens a little around the edges, like it does when he stands up after he’s been gaming for so long he’s forgotten to eat. 

It’s not a hard hit. The technical term for it would be a love tap, he supposes. Just the ridge of Daniel’s knuckles and the backs of his fingers. 

Max thinks (he  _ hopes _ ) that he doesn’t make a noise, but Daniel gives up his conversation to look over his shoulder and ask if he’s okay. It’s that, more than anything, that ruins it for Max.

He could have gotten over the hit itself with a few deep breaths and some mental gymnastics, but seeing the golden stretch of Daniel’s throat, combined with the apologetic cow eyes he’s pulled out sends Max over the edge. 

Max is suddenly, embarrassingly, hard in his shorts. 

Thank god he had already been on his way away from the table. He breaks eye contact with Daniel and exits the room in record time. The hallway is empty so he’s able to make it to the men’s room without anyone trying to start up conversation. 

Max locks himself in a stall and presses his back to the door. He focuses on breathing. 

He refuses to wank.

Not because it’s Daniel - Max has already crossed that line, many times - but because the whole thing is so ridiculous. 

You would think no one has touched Max before, for him to get hard at a misplaced hand on his dick. It wasn’t even a proper touch. And getting turned on from Daniel  _ caring to check up on him _ ? 

_ What the fuck is that about?  _

He stays there for long enough to be suspicious, but he’s absolutely not risking returning to the cafeteria until he’s calmed down. If Daniel says something, he’ll just tell him he’d been taking a shit. 

-

Malaysia brings another double podium for Max’s birthday, another night dancing too close to Daniel in celebration. They go to a different club, this time. Once again, Daniel picks Max up from his hotel room, once again he drinks in what Max is wearing with an appreciative whistle. 

Max is old enough (and drunk enough) to admit to himself that he’d chosen his outfit - a pair of dark-wash jeans and a black t-shirt - with Daniel’s reaction expressly in mind. It might be what he’s wearing, it might be that it’s his birthday, it might just be that Daniel doesn’t see anyone who catches his eye, but he doesn’t leave Max’s side all night.

The club is writhing along to something Max has never heard of before and he’s dimly aware that someone is standing on a table somewhere to the left of him, but he’s got eyes only for Daniel. 

He’s got his back to Max and it’s not like he hasn’t noticed Daniel’s ass before, but right now he’s really feeling like he hasn’t given it the appreciation it deserves. 

Daniel has been pouring drinks down Max’s throat all night like it’s his job and matching him glass for glass. Between the two of them, Daniel had drunk the most champagne on the podium, so he is considerably worse off than Max. It wouldn’t be a problem, not really, but a drunk Daniel is even more handsy than usual.

The song changes to something Daniel recognises and he grins, snaking a sweaty arm around Max’s waist and dive bombing head first into his shoulder. 

“You are so drunk, oh my god!” Max laughs, dropping his own hand to wrangle Daniel’s up off his ass. Daniel makes an apologetic sound high in his nose, patting Max’s waist in apology. 

“I’m not that bad!” He pulls back to stare seriously at Max. “I’m not! You’re littler than me! You’re just as drunk!”

Max squares his shoulders out, preens when he notices Daniel’s eyes widen in response. “Uh, excuse you? I’m definitely bigger than you.” 

“If you say so.” Daniel hides his filthy smirk by diving back into Max’s shoulder. “You might have to prove that to me, one day.” 

_ One day.  _

Max ignores the way adrenaline makes blood rush in his ears and rests his own hands on Daniel’s waist. 

He feels powerful and powerless all at once. 

He’s got a drunk, pliable Daniel pressed up against him, can feel the lithe flex of his waist, surprisingly narrow between his palms. Daniel is letting Max steer them, letting him slide their hips together, a teasing pressure, just enough distance to retain plausible deniability. 

Someone bumps Max from behind and he stumbles Daniel backwards, a drunken waltz. Daniel is humming the song into the soft skin of Max’s neck, nose tucked into the hinge of his jaw, his breath humid and panting. 

Max would be lying to himself if he said he wasn’t hard in his jeans. He’s aching. The sweet/sour pain of Daniel’s proximity stretches up into his chest, pinging around between his lungs like a badly swallowed pill. The bass of the music sends shockwaves through him. He shuts his eyes, steps closer to Daniel, lets himself float. 

His brain drops from under him and he’s not thinking about anything - not his dismal championship chances, not the expectations and pressure from his father, not the voice in his head shouting at him to get a girlfriend and end whatever this is. None of it exists here. 

Here, he is twenty years old and he’s finally won a race. Here, he is a lion, and he can have anything he wants. Here, he is golden. 

This year, it’s Max who can’t keep his hands off Daniel in the car.

He’d had to help Daniel into the backseat and from there, he just didn’t take his hands away. By the time they reach the hotel, Max is pressed so close to Daniel he might as well be in his lap. Daniel is either too drunk to notice or too drunk to care, and Max doesn’t care which it is, he’s too busy relishing in the knowledge of how strong Daniel’s thigh feels through the fabric of his jeans. 

They tumble out of the car together, Max’s hand curled in the back of Daniel’s t-shirt, Daniel’s fingers hooked through Max’s belt loops. There is no one to see them tangled together - even journalists have to sleep - and they make it to the elevators without incident. 

Daniel makes a valiant effort to fix his hair in the mirrored walls, sending an elbow into Max’s side when he laughs at him. Max ducks away from him, ticklish, and Daniel’s eyes glint. He’s trapped in a gilded cage with a dangerous animal, and he’s got nowhere else he wants to be. 

The doors open before Daniel can put his thoughts into action. He clearly expects Max to say goodnight at his door, but Max follows him inside. 

“I can offer you…” Daniel spins around his kitchenette. “Well, there’s alcohol in the mini-fridge but it’s all straight liquor so no good for you…” He’s clearly developing some plan for how to get their hands on more drinks at four in the morning. 

“I can’t believe you’re making me say this, but I think we’ve probably drunk enough.” 

Daniel rolls his eyes at him. “Spoil sport.” He leaves his shoes a jumbled mess next to the fridge and flops down face first on the bed. He squints up at Max, face mushed into the pillow in a way that Max should  _ not  _ be attracted to. “Are you just gonna stand there?”

Max’s shoes join Daniel’s and  _ Max  _ joins Daniel on the bed. Daniel wiggles around until he’s looking Max in the face. “Did ya have a good birthday?” 

They’re both sobering up, Max feels it. He slouches back against Daniel’s pillows. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it was good. Could have given me a present, though.” 

There’s a sudden, hot pressure on his knee. Daniel’s hand. 

Max wishes he could freeze Daniel like this - splayed out in bed, the muscles of his back pulled tight from stretching across the bed to touch Max, his fringe falling into his eyes and his cheeks pink and soft against the white cotton sheets. 

“I thought-” Daniel has to pause to clear his throat and the next half of the sentence comes out slightly strained. “I thought _I_ could be your present.” His fingers tense around Max’s knee and there’s only so much he can take. 

He stands up. If he keeps sitting there, letting Daniel touch him, letting himself look at Daniel and imagine all the other reasons he could have Daniel layed out in bed for him, he will do something they can’t come back from. 

“Where’s your first aid kit? I’ll fetch you some aspirin for the morning.” 

Daniel rolls onto his back with a languorous groan. “I didn’t know you cared.” His tone is joking but it cuts Max anyway. 

He cares more than people think. He tries not to give a shit about what people say about him online, but Daniel isn’t people online. 

_ I’m a real boy. I have feelings, too _ . 

If Daniel knew the extent of those feelings, they wouldn’t be here today. 

-

Instead of ignoring Daniel like he’d done last year, Max meets him in the lobby like they’d agreed. 

Daniel wears his hangover well. He’s dressed comfortably and if it weren’t for the sunglasses and the slight furrow of his forehead, Max wouldn’t even know he was affected by the night before. 

“Thanks for the aspirin,” is the first thing Daniel says to him. Max shrugs and lets them both pretend he hadn’t patted Daniel on the head before saying goodnight. 

He’d worried that he’d shown his hand too much, that Daniel would be the one pulling away this time. But Daniel is acting like nothing happened. If anything, he’s being too normal: touching Max the way he always does - half-joking, and telling rambling stories. 

He should probably be suspicious, worried. But Max doesn’t have the energy to analyse Daniel’s behaviour. 

He lets himself be touched, like he always does, and ties his best not to fall asleep on the way to the airport. He and Daniel have the same flight home, and he knows Daniel is going conk out the minute they get their seats. Max would rather spend the hours sleeping next to him than pretending not to look at his face. 

-

Max is fine. He’s fine!

Daniel is allowed to have other friends. It’s not like Max is even unused to the idea - Michael is always around, and Daniel flies in his mates from Perth all the time. Max does it, too.

He’s not being  _ weird  _ about this. He’s fine. 

It’s just that- Okay, Max knew that Daniel knows Brendon from their days in Formula Renault. But he hadn’t put a lot of thought into what that would mean when Brendon came to Formula 1. He hadn’t pictured the two of them ignoring each other, but he also hadn’t pictured… this. 

From the moment Daniel found out Brendon is replacing Daniil in Texas, he hasn’t shut up about it. It’s like every waking hour is spent telling anyone who will listen how talented Brendon is, how hard he’s worked, how far he’s come, how  _ proud  _ Daniel is that he’s finally getting the recognition he deserves. Max has never considered himself to be a jealous guy but this is really testing him. 

Here’s the thing. If Brendon was Australian, Max could understand it. Being the only Dutch driver gets lonely, sometimes. Sure, Nico speaks a little Dutch but it’s not the same. So he could understand if it was Daniel seeking a source of homely familiarity. 

But Brendon isn’t Australian. The two of them have made it abundantly clear that Australia and New Zealand are  _ definitely not  _ the same thing. 

They just have so many inside jokes. Max doesn’t have a hope in hell of understanding them. They also do this weird thing where one of them will say something odd, something Max just puts down to the language barrier, and the other one will rip the absolute shit out of them. 

Most of the time it’s Daniel bullying Brendon, but when it’s the other way around it makes Daniel go blushy and defensive and Max  _ hates it _ . It used to be that he was the only one who got to make Daniel react like that.

It gets worse when Daniel starts mimicking Brendon’s accent. To Max’s ear, the only difference is Daniel closes his mouth more when he speaks. But  _ apparently  _ he’s doing something right because Brendon howls with laughter every single time. 

Max fumes, quietly, privately. Whatever he’s going through (it’s nothing, he’s  _ fine _ ) the last thing he needs is anyone noticing.

-

Max walks in on Daniel sitting in Brendon’s lap in his hotel room. Daniel had texted him to drop by his room to chill out, and the door had been unlocked so Max figured it was okay to go straight in.

Neither of them jump away from each other, nor do they look ashamed to have been caught, so Max doesn’t immediately retreat. If they don’t think this is weird, then it’s not weird. 

Daniel grins at Max and waves something in his direction. It sounds like foil and Max hopes like  _ hell  _ it’s not what he thinks it is. He already has to deal with knowing what Daniel looks like sitting sideways across Brendon’s thighs, one arm slung around his neck, he doesn’t need an image of them breaking out a condom. 

“Look what Brendon found!” 

“A Cherry Ripe.” Brendon helpfully pipes up. 

It sounds suggestive. Max stares at them both, impassive. 

“A chocolate bar. It’s like coconut and cherry flavouring, and it’s pink and delicious. Like a better version of a Bounty Bar.” Daniel gesticulates wildly and the foil in his hand (a chocolate bar wrapper, Max sees now) hits Brendon in the face. “I’d have shared but… you don’t like coconut.”

“Max doesn’t like coconut?” 

As if he’s not in the room. 

Max looks between the two of them, both grinning, still far too close to each other. He takes his phone out of his pocket. Presses the home button. Holds it out to the room. “My mum,” he lies. He leaves Daniel’s room and pulls up Google as soon as he’s in the corridor. 

Cherry Ripes look awful. 

Brendon and Daniel are welcome to them. 

\- 

Max gets over his annoyance with Brendon when he finds out how embarrassingly besotted he is with his girlfriend. 

-

This year’s On the Sofa is much less awkward. 

For sure, the fact that Max hasn’t been ignoring Daniel for weeks this time certainly helps, but the extra year of living in each other’s pockets, of watching each other fail and succeed in turn, of bitching about their cars, sharing the same ambivalence toward the PR stuff they’re always being dragged into… 

All of it has let them develop a relationship that’s more than  _ teammates who are friendly _ and closer to  _ friends who are teammates _ . 

“What about you?”  _ What overnight skill would you like to have? _ Daniel asks and the little uptick of his voice, like they’re on a date and throwing questions back and forward, still finding their stride, makes Max’s brain short-circuit. 

“Better Fifa player,” is all that comes out. While it’s not  _ untrue  _ \- Max  _ would  _ like to be better at Fifa - the way Daniel says “really?” makes him wish he’d thought of something more sophisticated. 

“I’m such a child,” he says, just to acknowledge it before Daniel can. 

Max never really thinks about his age. Not unless someone is pointing out that he’s breaking another youngest driver record. Age truly doesn’t factor into his interactions with any of the drivers; Max isn’t the twenty year old on track, he’s just another helmet in their wing mirrors. 

When he’s with Daniel, though, he is viscerally aware of it. 

Daniel carries himself with an ease that Max has never understood. It comes with age, that’s what everyone has always said. His mum, when Max was in angry tears because he didn’t understand why people kept getting mad at him for having opinions:  _ “It’ll come when you get older, mijn lieveling. Sometimes, when you are young, people prefer not to listen to you.” _

People listen to Max now. It doesn’t feel like he thought it would. He still doesn’t understand how he will ever carry himself with the assurance of other men. He worries he’s going to inherit it from his father - that stony, abrasive self-confidence he has, the type of man you know will get shit done but take no prisoners while doing so. 

Daniel, on the other hand, still has the light of youth in him. There’s a comforting, steadfast pressure to his presence that Max wants to draw around himself like a shield. Perhaps, if he stays close enough to Daniel, watches him close enough, he’ll absorb some of it. 

Max hopes he doesn’t show it. Sometimes he forgets to be scared that his crush is going to show and starts worrying that Daniel is going to mistake the way he looks at him for hero worship. He doesn’t think of Daniel as better than him, doesn’t even like to think of him as older than him, necessarily. 

Being with Daniel is easy. He lets Max drag himself up to his level, while sinking down a little to meet Max in the middle. Even so, Max wants to cling to Daniel sometimes, hold onto his shoulders and say  _ don’t let me go, I need a breather.  _

Daniel is a shelter. 

-

Max leaves for the winter break with the ghost of Daniel’s finger on his nipple and the echo of Daniel singing that he wishes Max would ask him out beating a tattoo between his ribs. 


	3. 2018 - Midwest shooting star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternative title: Well Done Baku
> 
> title from [here](https://genius.com/Walk-the-moon-avalanche-lyrics)

If you want to put a timestamp on things, it starts in China. Daniel has just got his first podium of the season. 

Max is tipsy on a few mouthfuls of champagne that was passed around the Red Bull garage. 

He’s sick and tired of playing the _will they won’t they_ game of cat and mouse inside his own damn head, he’s comfortable enough in his seat at Red Bull that he’s no longer worried that one wrong move could send him ricocheting into Toro Rosso after Kvyat. 

So, yeah he’s not totally sober, he’s still got race endorphins running through him, it’s a muggy night in Shanghai, and he’s overheated so his brain isn’t firing on all cylinders. It’s Daniel’s first win of the season and Max will be damned if he lets him celebrate it alone in his hotel room.

The hotel they’re staying in is more busy than it has any right to be at 11pm. People keep stopping Max to congratulate him (fifth place, big deal) or thrust a Sharpie under his nose or shoehorn him into an uncomfortably close selfie. 

By the time he makes it through the lobby and to the bank of elevators his skin feels itchy, his shirt too restrictive. 

He bounces on the balls of his feet the whole ride up to the floor Red Bull have booked out, and when he arrives at Daniel’s door he’s vibrating in place. 

He knocks at the door, braces his shoulder against the door jamb, rocks his head back and forward against the wall a few times (it’s cool and he’s so, so warm), knocks again. 

He hears rustling from inside - Dan getting up, moving towards him - knocks again and again and… And Daniel is opening the door, squinting into the bright light of the hallway as if he’s… 

“Did I _wake you_?!” Max demands. He’d miss Daniel’s wince if he wasn’t paying such close attention to his face. 

Daniel retreats into the darkness of his room without a word, but he leaves the door ajar so Max has no compunctions against following him in. 

Daniel turns on the lamp next to the bed. 

The sheets are rumpled, there’s a dint in the middle of one of the pillows. 

Maybe Max _did_ wake him. 

Daniel has his windows open so there’s a light breeze in the room. It calms Max’s nerves a little, stops him feeling quite as much like an overwound cog. 

He watches Daniel visibly shrug off sleep. 

Daniel’s hair is fluffy and curling irregularly, almost as if he got in bed with it wet from a shower. Max is suddenly viscerally aware of the way his own shirt is stuck to his back and that he probably reeks with stale sweat and alcohol. 

He brandishes a bottle of lager he’d pinched on his way through the lobby. 

“I brought us entertainment.” As if he isn’t disturbing Daniel’s night. As if he’s invited. 

There’s a mighty cheer from the street below them, an engine backfires, and Daniel grins. 

“I wasn’t getting any sleep anyway.” He nods Max in the direction of the sofa and they stretch out like that, a few feet apart, Max’s knee pulled up pointing toward Daniel, both Daniel’s legs splayed out at jaunty angles. 

Max startles when Daniel’s hand brushes his bare wrist but he’s only taking the beer from him. He watches Daniel pin the neck of the bottle between his back teeth - mouth stretched wide around the brown glass - and crack the lid off. 

Max has only a few seconds to recover from Daniel spitting the bottle cap into his lap before Daniel’s hand is back in front of him. 

“Here. Losers first.” The glass is wet from Daniel’s mouth and oh, Max hadn’t thought this through.

“Losers isn’t fifth place.”

“Tell that to your face, mate.”

Max drinks to avoid answering that. 

Daniel _won_ and Max has been working on being a more supportive teammate. Tonight’s not about him. 

He passes the bottle back before Daniel can reach into his lap again. He watches Daniel’s throat as he swallows, the tension in his cheeks, how he holds the bottle neck pinched between two fingers like a cigarette. 

The beer sits heavy on top of the champagne. Max realises the last thing he ate was a bite and a half of an apple before he was sucked into the vortex of post-race meetings. 

He settles himself against the arm of the sofa, content just to let Daniel make his way through the bottle. The condensation has started making its way over his fingers, one stubborn drop clinging to the hairs of his right pinky. 

After a couple more long swallows, Daniel visibly remembers that they’re sharing the beer and hands it back. 

Max fumbles the pass on purpose, sending their fingers tangling together and the bottle tipping dangerously towards his crotch. 

“Whoops!” Daniel giggles, soft and low in his throat. Max’s stomach cramps down on itself and he takes a big breath, sucking down several large gulps of lager. 

He winces around his mouthful, regretting the taste but thankful for the renewed buzz between his ears. 

“I can’t believe you actually drink this stuff.” 

“Oh that’s right!” Daniel crows. “I forgot you have the taste of a twelve year old girl. Where’s your soft drink?”

Max takes another drink, just to have something to hide his blush behind. 

“Well, you’re the race winner. You can bring a soft drink when I win next week.” All these years in front of cameras and Max still hasn’t got the hang of engaging his brain to mouth filter. All these years with Daniel and he still has trouble letting his guard down. 

Daniel leans forward to take the beer back and Max’s body pulls a little further toward the centre of the sofa. 

“This isn’t even good beer.” And fuck if that doesn’t curdle the alcohol in Max’s stomach. “You’re gonna have to think up a better reward if you want me to buy for you next week.”

The fact that Daniel doesn’t even hesitate to agree that Max will win next week is something Max doesn’t have enough bandwidth to deal with right now. 

Max is a professional athlete and he’s also twenty years old so he hears the challenge and his brain shuts off. 

“Pass me the beer.”

Daniel looks rattled by the steel in his voice. He passes the beer. 

Max doesn’t think, he just takes a great big gulp and then he puts his mouth on Daniel’s. 

It can’t be called a kiss. 

He misjudges his forward momentum and rockets into Daniel’s face faster than he has any right to. Frankly, it’s a miracle he doesn’t hear a crunch from where he sends his nose straight into Daniel’s. Instead of pulling back and cutting his losses, Max doubles down, moves his head at the same time Daniel does and pushes his chin into Daniel’s bottom lip. 

Daniel’s laugh ( _he laughs_ ) is pained and the whole thing is even more awful and awkward than Max could ever have imagined. There’s another eruption of noise from the street below and god, it’s like the whole city is witness to his humiliation.

He’s pulling away and struggling to his feet, and the frantic animal part of his brain registers that the door is too far away and Daniel’s windows are open and it’s a short trip to the footpath that way. His shoulders are icy hot. He can’t feel his feet and he’s sick to his stomach. 

Daniel is clearing his throat and Max is nodding, apologising… 

“Close.”

 _What_. 

He lets himself look at Daniel. Who has tucked his right leg under his ass and is leaning forward on the sofa, a coiled crouch. 

His eyes are dark in the dim light of the room and he’s looking right at Max. 

“Close,” Daniel repeats. “But you’ll have to try harder.”

Daniel reaches forward to wrap one hand around the back of Max’s knee. It’s sweaty and it should be gross but Max’s heart is trying to throw itself out the window separate of his body, and all that’s happening in his brain is ‘ _don’t blink don’t movedon’tblinkdon’tmov-’_

Daniel’s fingers tense around the soft barely-touched skin of Max’s leg, compelling him forward. 

Daniel leans back in his seat to stare up at Max. 

There’s a shy smile hiding in the corners of his mouth and Max follows the pressure of his hand down, bending at the waist. 

Daniel’s other hand, the hand that’s still a little cold from holding the beer, comes up to cup Max’s chin. The knuckle of his pointer finger on the point of his chin and his thumb in the dip below Max’s bottom lip. 

This time the kiss is slow. 

It’s soft and short and Daniel’s lips are dry and still taste like beer. When he pulls back, Max preemptively fills the silence. 

“Yeah, you taste like beer actually.”

Daniel propels himself backwards with the force of his laughter. Max’s knee is bereft, naked against the sudden absence of Dan’s palm. 

“Oh my god, you are _such_ a twelve year old!”

“Uh… gross!” Max dreads to think what his face looks like right now. He wants to look disgusted but he’s violently aware of the heat in his cheeks. 

Daniel shrugs, giggles, and spreads his arms along the back of the sofa. He’s still looking _up_ at Max and his legs are open on either side of Max’s hips. 

“C’mere kid.” Max snorts and Daniel’s eyes boggle at himself. “Oh jeezus. Can we pretend I didn’t say that?”

It shouldn’t, but seeing Daniel make a fool of himself loosens the part of his chest that’s still running scared. 

He kneels down into the gap between Daniel’s legs and realises very quickly that he’s not going to fit. Daniel sets one hand against Max’s hip to steady him, and fuck, his fingers stretch almost to the middle of Max’s back. 

Max feels Daniel’s shoulder contract under his hand as he bears down, giving Daniel more of his weight while he shuffles his other knee onto the arm of the sofa. It ends up with him straddling Daniel’s thigh with one hand on his shoulder and the other creeping closer to his face. 

It’s not comfortable. 

It doesn’t matter. 

“Hey,” Daniel murmurs, tips his face into Max’s hand. 

“Hey,” Max says. 

And then Daniel’s mouth is hot and wet under his. 

He kisses him and kisses him until he stops tasting like beer and starts just tasting like spit. 

Daniel’s thigh is strong and sure under Max. The vee of his legs is keeping Max’s knee warm. One hand is still on Max’s hip, the other one is skipping between the prickly hairs at the base of his skull and the sharp hinge of his jaw. 

He doesn’t want it to stop. 

It could go on all night but then Max gets complacent. 

He checks out of his own brain, and yawns straight into Daniel’s mouth. He recoils immediately. 

“Shit! Sorry, that’s gross!” 

Daniel drags him back to his mouth for a quick conciliatory kiss. 

“Nah, you’re all good. Bedtime though, I think.” He tangles their fingers together when they make it to their feet. There’s a question in his eyes as he leads Max towards the bed. 

Max’s brain is humming with the absence of thoughts. Or that’s not quite true. His head is full with all the places Daniel touched him. With all the places Daniel is _yet_ to touch him. 

Daniel drops his hand to strip his top off. Max’s stomach clenches as he waits for Daniel to make a move toward his own shirt but he just clambers into the bed, propping himself against the headboard. 

He swallows a wave of thrilled nausea. 

Getting undressed is different with Daniel watching him.

The heat of his gaze is heavy but he’s looking without expectation. It’s… Max hesitates to use the word ‘innocent’ because nothing about the way Daniel is lounging against the sheets is innocent, but it’s like nothing Max has felt before.

He dumps his clothes in a pile then follows Daniel’s lead, wriggling under the covers in just his boxers. 

Part of Max expected it to be awkward now they’re in bed together. But it’s not. 

Daniel scoots down the bed and waits for Max to settle himself on the pillow next to him before he turns off the lamp. 

“Goodnight,” Daniel says. As simple as that. Max’s stomach flips. 

“Goodnight,” he agrees. 

He realises, when the side of Daniel’s foot brushes his, that he’s never been in bed with someone he hasn’t fucked before. It’s surprisingly nice. 

He lies still for a long time, staring at the ceiling and pressing his lips together to preserve the kiss-numb feeling. He falls asleep between one blink and the next, marvelling at the warmth radiating off Daniel’s near-naked skin. 

-

The morning after should be awkward. Max fully expected his brain to wake him up with a spike of adrenaline so he’d have a chance to escape the bed before Daniel was even close to awake. Instead, he wakes up slowly.

He’s warm all the way through to his bones, a heady slow heat he associates with falling asleep on his balcony in Monaco. There’s a soft breeze against his left wrist where he’d forgotten to take his watch off. Daniel is lying next to him, a searing pressure along Max’s side. 

He thinks, at first, that Daniel is still asleep. Awake, Daniel is a whirlpool, the warm current of water lifting Max up and dragging him along. Max turns on his side to take his chance at getting a close up look at a becalmed Daniel. He trails his eyes over the rolling slope of Daniel’s bare shoulder, the dips of his clavicle, the way he’s never really thought about it before but Daniel’s chest is silk smooth. 

“Creep.”

It startles Max hard enough he nips his own tongue. The mattress moves under him with Daniel’s chuckle. 

“Just as well I didn’t put money on it - I never would have pegged you for the Edward Cullen of this relationship.” Daniel’s voice is still thick with sleep. Max clenches his thighs and tries not to stammer. 

“I’m just embarrassed you just made a Twilight reference!”

“Yeah,” Daniel shrugs. “But you’re the one who understood it, so…” He gets an elbow under himself and leans forward into Max’s air. His breath is horrendous. 

Max lets him kiss him anyway. 

Kissing Daniel without clothes between them is lovely.

They’re both a little sweaty from being trapped under the covers all night and their chests slide right over each other. Daniel arranges them so Max is trapped between the side of Daniel’s body and the mattress, having to tilt his neck up to lick deeper into Daniel’s mouth. 

Daniel’s back is as smooth as his chest and Max spares a moment to think about the way they contrast each other. He’s so light next to Daniel, his skin pinking up as their kiss deepens, while Daniel stays a perfect shade of burnished copper. He’s frantic to Daniel’s studied calm; molten iron waiting to be shaped into a tool, while Daniel is a cool wash of water, growing, making, sustaining life. 

Max feels frantic with it, feels needy and wanting and ready to burst. 

He finally can’t control the buck of his hips anymore and Daniel rumbles into his mouth, falling back onto the mattress with a wide smile. 

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Did you sleep well?” He asks, then wants to throw himself out of bed. His dick is pressed against the waistband of his boxers, he’s got Daniel almost naked in a hotel in Shanghai, and the best he can come up with is to ask how Daniel slept.

“Mm, perfectly.” Daniel closes his eyes and turns his face into the pillow. Max clenches down around his thoughts. “Next time I have trouble falling asleep I’ll make sure and remember to call you.” 

_Next time_ , a little voice in Max’s head thrills. 

-

Daniel has to run a few errands before they leave Shanghai and Max is content to fuck around in his room instead of braving the crowds, so they reunite on the flight to Nice. 

There’s a moment, between Daniel stowing his bag and sitting down across the aisle from Max, that Max panics the awkwardness he’d expected this morning had just been waiting until now. 

He looks at Daniel and can’t think of a single thing to say. 

They’re in public. They can’t kiss, and Max can’t exactly hold his hand either. 

But Daniel spins to sit sideways in his seat and chucks a tiny wrapped package at Max. “Got you something. Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to share.” 

It’s a package of strawberry flavoured fudge. Max tucks his smile into his shoulder. He remembers to thank Daniel, this time, but he still texts him when he reaches his apartment in Monaco. 

> _I think that was the best fudge ive ever had. I’ll have to make it up to you... [sent 17:30]_
> 
> **I’m just watching a match. Come by?** **😉 [delivered 17:41]**

It’s not that he _expects_ anything, but it would be silly to arrive unprepared, so Max takes his time in the shower, picks out a pair of jeans that girls have told him make his thighs look nice, and dabs cologne on himself. He checks the stash of condoms in his wallet are still within date, and gives himself a nervous once over in the mirror. 

He thinks he looks good. Maybe he’s a little self-conscious about his hair. He grabs a Red Bull cap on his way out the door. 

Daniel takes the cap off as soon as he opens the door. “I’m not kissing you with that in my face.” 

Max lets himself be pulled toward the sofa and doesn’t think about the fact that Daniel made no move for his jeans until he’s back in his own room, hours later, kiss drunk and still warm from sitting in Daniel’s lap all evening. 

-

They don’t spend the whole time between China and Azerbaijan together. Max has stuff planned with his friends, and Daniel likes to use his time off to spend time by himself. 

They do text. A lot. 

Daniel runs into Max in the grocery store and blows a stream of cold air at the back of his neck, leaving Max with goosebumps and a confused erection. 

> **You look hot when youre domestic [delivered 12:58]**
> 
> **I’m making pizza tonight. Come over? [delivered 15:02]**

Once again, Max showers, dresses in his best casual clothes, and arrives at Daniel’s door with a questioning hunger in his stomach. If he’s being honest with himself, he’s probably glad that Daniel drags him into the kitchen and doesn’t let him leave until all the toppings are prepared and the sauce properly blended. 

There’s a little light petting in front of the fridge, and after they’ve eaten Daniel drapes himself around Max for some more necking, but that’s all. 

Max needs to do more research about this sort of stuff anyway. 

-

“What’s up?” Daniel peers at Max from behind his door. “You didn’t text, are you okay?”

Max nods. He’s wearing shorts and a team-branded shirt. He’s not here for _that_ kind of social call. “Yeah, yeah. I just…” He slips himself between Daniel’s body and the door. “I ran out of toilet paper. Can I use yours?” 

“Of course,” Daniel says. “Bathroom’s just there.” Max likes Daniel’s apartment. It’s almost the same layout as Max’s but flipped. Being higher up the building it gets slightly more sunlight, too.

“I know.” Max finds Daniel’s toilet rolls under his sink. “Thanks, mate.” 

He bounces the toilet roll off Daniel’s shoulder on his way out the door. Daniel looks slightly baffled, but Max will catch him later for a proper conversation.

\- 

“Hey,” Max stares at the Daniel on his screen. “You’re calling?” 

Daniel’s face bobs in and out of focus. He’s holding his phone at a weird angle. “I’m getting dinner. Pasta. Do you want anything? I’m in line now or I would have text. _Fuck_ it’s busy here.” 

It pricks at something deep inside Max, the knowledge that Daniel had thought about him, is going out of his way to feed Max. He asks for the first thing he can think of - a carbonara - and tells Daniel he’ll forward him the money. 

“Yeah nah,” Daniel shakes his head. “Don’t even worry about it, mate. My treat.” 

\- 

“You’ll never fucking believe what just happened to me.” Max is speaking before Daniel has even opened the door. “I’m so pissed off.” 

“Well, come in, then.”

Max flops down on his sofa. “So I went to clean my car, right? Because after the rain yesterday it got all dusty and tacky looking. And, honestly, not even two minutes after I finished, a bird came along and shit all over it. All in the middle of my windscreen as well! Can you believe it?” 

Max knows that Daniel is laughing at him and he doesn’t even care. Daniel is sitting next to him on the sofa, one huge, warm palm covering his knee, and he’s smiling. It’s all Max needs. All he came here for, this easy camaraderie, knowing Daniel is there to listen. 

And if he ends up sucking on Daniel’s tongue and teasing a shriek out of him by worming his still-cold hands down the back of Daniel’s shirt, then that’s a bonus. 

\- 

Red Bull always books them the nicest hotel rooms - huge, sprawling things nearly too big for just one person. Max spends almost no time in his. Daniel invites him for a nightcap after the first track walk at Baku and then he pretty much never leaves. 

“Is it wrong I want to kiss you when you’re in the car?” Max muses, curling one arm over Daniel’s bare chest. They’re sprawled on Daniel’s bed after qualifying, both of them just in their underwear, Max still in his socks. He has his chin tucked into the crease of Daniel’s armpit. 

He feels loose, calm. It’s not how he usually feels the night before a race, but he’s been thoroughly kissed and Daniel is holding Max’s hand over his ribs. 

Daniel’s heartbeat doesn’t change. “What, like leaning into the cockpit for me? Sounds uncomfortable.” 

Max remembers how it had felt to bend at the waist to kiss Daniel, that night on the couch in China, and he thinks leaning down to kiss Daniel, no matter how uncomfortable, is always worth it. Just to hold onto the image of his wide brown eyes and pink mouth stretched up for Max. 

“Yeah, I could buckle you in tomorrow, you know. Get you properly excited for the race. For good luck.” A dirty flash of his palm pressed to Daniel’s crotch through the dark material of his race overalls fills Max’s vision. He swallows around a sudden rush of saliva. 

“As much as I would love that… I think the engineers would get jealous.” Daniel’s teeth scrape the inside of Max’s arm. He nips at the bone of his wrist and presses a dry kiss to his palm. Max’s dick perks up. He shifts to lean over Daniel and they lose the rest of the night to each other’s mouths. 

\- 

Max has no idea what they’re going to do after the race. He’s fucked it. Massively. 

Daniel won’t speak to him in the garage after the crash. Max is pissed off beyond belief. It was a racing incident. Max didn’t turn and break in Daniel’s path on _purpose_. It fucked his own race, too. Why would he do that?

He’d have understood if Daniel had cornered him in the garage, yelled at him. But to straight out ignore him? It’s unprofessional, it’s immature, and it’s hurtful. 

Max doesn’t want to acknowledge why it hurts when Daniel takes a seat at the opposite end of the briefing table and then refuses to make eye contact. He’s been witness to more of Christian’s angry tirades than he cares to count, but usually Daniel is there to roll his eyes at, exchange a sympathetically wry smile. 

Not this time. 

The worst thing about it - the _worst_ thing - is that it leaves Max wondering if the last time he got to kiss Daniel was the furtive snog they’d had in the recess between Daniel’s room and the hotel elevator. 

Max’s keycard is still in the front pocket of his backpack, somewhere at the foot of Daniel’s bed. He can’t bear the thought of the humiliation of having to knock on Daniel’s door tonight and retrieve his stuff like a rejected toy. 

No, not _like_ a reject. He _is_ a reject. 

Daniel doesn’t stick around after the meeting. Christian makes them apologise to each other and Max nods, catching the resentment in Daniel’s voice and the livid light of fury behind his eyes. 

Even without one of Daniel’s engineers having a quiet word in his ear that he “should probably let Dan cool down a bit, yeah?” Max wouldn’t have tried to approach him. 

He’s had two decades to learn the repercussions of putting himself where he isn’t wanted. 

He gets the receptionist to give him another key card. He can get his clothes from Daniel in the morning. 

He’s fresh out of the shower, sulking and considering the benefits of having a wank or just going straight to sleep, when there’s a knock on his door. It can’t be anyone _but_ Daniel, but why would it be Daniel? Max opens the door, prepared to fight. 

“Hey,” Daniel opens. Max stares at him, refusing to give him anything back. “What a shitshow, am I right?” He’s holding a bottle of beer and a six pack of… 

“Is that vodka?” 

“Strawberry flavoured. I know how much you complained about the beer taste last time.” 

_Last time_ Max had been kissing the beer taste off Daniel’s tongue. He wants to make Daniel wait for it, make him feel some of the anxious tension that’s been thrumming through Max all afternoon. But Max has never been any good at turning Daniel down. 

Daniel by-passes the sofa entirely, heading straight for Max’s bed. It’s perfectly made, unslept in all weekend. 

“Sorry about earlier.” He’s focusing on opening their drinks, holds one out to Max. “I just needed some time to myself, you know? Didn’t want to lose my head at you, uh, too much.” 

Personally, Max would rather Daniel let loose at him instead of suffer through an afternoon of being ignored. “Move over, then.” He jostles the mattress on purpose which backfires by sending Daniel’s beer spilling out onto his thigh. Max gets stuck staring at the damp patch against his dark grey sweats. 

“Did you… What did you do?” He feels on the backfoot, not sure how he’s supposed to act around this Daniel. It’s a foreign feeling. 

Daniel takes a long drink. “Sat in my room pretty much. Kicked my bed. Hurt my foot, which was pretty embarrassing. Sulked.” He knocks his knee against Max’s. “Missed seeing your stupid face.” 

“If it’s so stupid, what does that make yours?” Max quips. It feels like a redemption, a vindication, that even in the peak of his fury, Daniel had been thinking of him. Missing him. 

“Most people would say sexy, wouldn’t you agree?” He leans into Max’s space, bottom lip wet with the remnants of beer. Max looks regretfully between it and his strawberry cruiser. He’s been too focused on having Daniel on his bed to do more than take a cursory sip. But if Daniel is here, wanting to kiss him, Max isn’t going to turn it down just because of beer mouth. Then again… 

“No.” Max cuts Daniel off, leaning away from his mouth and feeling a vicious thrill at the flash of hurt in his face. _Let him see what it’s like to be given the cold shoulder._ “Drink this first. I put up with the beer last time but not now. Drink.” Their fingers meet around the neck of the bottle and Daniel holds eye contact while he takes a long, self-indulgent glug. 

“It’s so fucking sweet.” 

Max grins, presses into Daniel’s space, this time. “Like me.” 

Daniel closes his teeth around Max’s lip in reply.

And if they can survive Baku, then the rest of the season is practically guaranteed, isn’t it? 


	4. 2018 - Stars that we never really owned (Daniel's Interlude)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> title from [here](https://genius.com/The-head-and-the-heart-honeybee-lyrics)

Daniel has noticed the way Max looks at him because he’s not _blind_. For a guy usually so good at masking his emotions and keeping his face schooled into something that just makes him end up looking pissed off, Max is spectacularly terrible at hiding this. 

Perhaps Daniel is being uncharitable. He doesn’t think the Max he was partnered with in 2016 knew why he was watching Daniel. 

Something clearly changed after their double podium in Malaysia, Max withdrew, stopped responding to Daniel with sunny smiles and the eagerness of a touch-starved house cat. 

Pre-Malaysia Max was an open book, even if he couldn’t read himself. Post-Malaysia Max thinks he’s being covert, but Daniel has already memorised him - he doesn’t need to see the hunger in his eyes to know it’s there. 

At first it’s easy for Daniel to laugh about it. (To himself - he would never subject Max to the humiliation of sharing his school-boy hero worship with anyone else.) 

Because that’s what it is. A school-yard crush. 

Max is eighteen. Daniel has been presented to him on a platter by Red Bull, dressed in the livery of a mentor, a brotherly figure to chase and learn from, and, eventually, to beat. 

The more it goes on, the closer he lets Max, the more they text and the more Daniel learns the places Max’s grammar will fall endearingly short, the more PR events Red Bull sends them to and the more they get to know each other, the harder it is to keep that distance. 

Because for all his youth, there’s a seriousness to Max that Daniel can’t help but be attracted to. It’s harder to rein himself in, knowing that.

When given the choice between facing something head on and choosing humour, nine out of ten times, Daniel will pick humour. And so, rather than establish boundaries, either with Max or in his own head, he faces the protective heat that rises in his chest when Max is around with jokes. He lies to himself, tells himself it’s something pseudo-brotherly. 

It’s easy to believe himself when they are just fooling around the Red Bull paddock set up.

It becomes something else entirely when his phone pings with a photo of Max, starkly lit in the white light of his hotel bathroom, shaving foam coating half his face and dripping onto his shirt, and all he can think is how handsome Max looks. 

It gets to the point that Daniel knows if he were to make a move, Max would receive it well. 

He gives Daniel so many opportunities, whether he knows it or not. 

Even as Max ushers a girl out of the dark recesses of whatever club they’ve ended up in, plastered along her back and with her hand in the back pocket of his jeans, he looks to Daniel. And Daniel snogs whoever he’s dancing with, closing his mouth around the taste of lipstick, and his eyes around the sweaty glow of his teammate’s neck. 

And that’s the kicker, isn’t it? Max is his teammate. 

It doesn’t matter how much Daniel likes Max (he really likes Max). It doesn’t matter how much he really, really _wants_ Max - and who knew that about Daniel? That a cocksure rookie with fire in his blood and steel in his eyes would be Daniel’s type? 

It doesn’t matter. 

It’s Daniel’s job, within the team, considering the life experience he has on Max, to be the responsible one. 

So it simmers away between them, this gently rising tension, steam in a pressure cooker - enclosed, wrapped up in the denial they’ve both put in place, tenderising and infusing and only waiting for someone to break the seal. 

By 2018, Max’s star is well and truly rising, and Daniel is already considering jumping from Red Bull’s ship. The resentment he feels toward Max sometimes, no matter how many nights he lies awake telling himself it isn’t Max’s fault, is a screaming warning siren. 

He genuinely considers Max a friend. He wouldn’t keep spending his time off with him if he didn’t. But even so, even in the face of his undeniable affection for the young lion of the paddock, he has times where he hates him. 

Or, no, he doesn’t hate _Max._ He hates how Red Bull makes him feel like Max is his enemy.

In some ways, as drivers, that’s true. 

Max is the only man in the paddock that Daniel can _truly_ compare himself to. He has a contractual obligation to push against him. But the dynamic of it, the rising crescendo of _fight to kill, kill to win, win or burn up_ is slowly blurring the carefully constructed lines between Max the Driver and Max the Person. 

Daniel is happy to fight with Max the Driver. 

He’s scared about what will happen if he moves things forward with Max the Person. 

-

When Max shows up at Daniel’s door, flushed with heat and a jittery energy Daniel can’t quite read, he lets him in. 

He doesn’t expect to be kissed, doesn’t expect to reel Max back in, dare him to do better, but he does. And once he’s got Max straddling him - a warm, solid wall of muscle and bloody-minded stubbornness - he can’t even bring himself to regret giving in to it. 

The release of kissing Max, of being able to run his tongue over the perfectly straight line of his teeth and confirm that, yes, Max has a retainer fitted, is _almost_ as good as the winner’s buzz he’s still riding. 

It’s a heady thrill, getting his hands on something he’s spent years convincing himself was out of reach. 

The sensation that he’s being given something bigger than he knows how to express is amplified when Max yawns into his mouth and Daniel doesn’t flinch away from it. 

He’s conscious of the alcohol in both their systems, so when he leads Max to his bed, he keeps his underwear on and leaves enough space on the mattress between them that they could, if they ignored the last hour, pretend it was any other night crashing in each other’s room. 

When his foot brushes against Max and he isn’t automatically pushed away, Daniel’s stomach performs a slow, rolling backflip and then settles down, content. 

He closes his eyes, listens to Max breathing next to him, the rustle of his sheets as he squirms a little to get comfortable, and is asleep before he has time to question whether this is a good idea. 

\- 

Daniel has promised to send some gifts home to Perth, mainly for the kids, but it’s never a bad idea to suck up to mum and get her something, too. 

Max is clearly happy to avoid the crowds, so he kisses Max goodbye before he heads out. And isn’t that something? The casual intimacy of a goodbye when they know they’ll see each other again in a few hours. 

He’s almost got everything he needs and he should really be thinking about meeting his car to the airport, but he walks past a confectioner’s and thinks immediately of Max. 

Last night had been a gift for Daniel, Max was pretty clear that the kissing was at least partly motivated by Daniel’s podium, so it’s only fair he gets Max something in return. 

It’s marketed towards tourists, so everything is ridiculously expensive. Just looking at the price of the chocolates makes Daniel feel like he’s bleeding money. Nevertheless, his curiosity has been piqued and there’s a little gift box of strawberry fudge wrapped up all fancy. 

“I’ll just get this today, ta.” He tells the cashier, holding the box out to her. It’s morbidly expensive. He’s sure he could find a market somewhere selling the exact thing for about a fifth of the price, but he’s running late and the wrapping really is very pretty. 

In the car on the way to the airport he starts second-guessing himself. 

_Is it too much?_

Leave it to Daniel to be the sort of guy who gets the best snog of the year and then totally loses his mind. It’s not _quite_ an engagement ring but looking at the square edges poking a hole in the top of his backpack, it might as well be. 

But no. He’d have bought it for Max before the kissing. 

His motive would have been the same: maybe earn himself a punch to the shoulder for giving him something pink and girly, but ultimately make Max smile. 

Only Daniel needs to know that this time, his motive is tempered by the knowledge of how Max’s smile feels against his skin. 

His impulse pays off. Max rewards him with a shy little smile, one Daniel doesn’t know if he’s seen before. 

They can’t kiss goodbye when they arrive in Nice, because it’s public and there’s no plausible explanation to both go to the bathroom together. Daniel tells Max not to share his fudge with the first model he meets, and Max gives him a salacious grin, assuring him he’d already done so while Daniel had been asleep over Central Europe. 

It’s an odd feeling, returning to his apartment after a race week. 

Something about the rapid transition of going from being utterly surrounded by people, to the pure solitude of his own company throws him. As much as Daniel loves being alone, not having to worry about being On all the time, putting on a show, there’s part of him that feels a bit set adrift. 

He bums around his apartment, watching a replay of a UFC match he’d missed while in China, knowing it’s Too Much to text Max asking if he’s up to anything, but not loving the thought of an evening spent alone. 

> _I think that was the best fudge ive ever had. I’ll have to make it up to you... [sent 17:30]_

One thing about Max, Daniel has learned, is that he can never bring himself to say thank you. Not outright. 

> **I’m just watching a match. Come by?** **😉 [delivered 17:41]**

Waiting for Max to show up is (who knew) fucking torturous. Daniel considers changing out of shorts and into something nicer, but decides against it. He’s the mature one here. He’s not allowed to be desperate. 

Except Max shows up looking fucking incredible. 

He’s dressed in the tightest pair of dark blue jeans Daniel has ever seen him in, and he smells fresh out of the shower. He’s wearing another bloody cap, though. Daniel wants to see the way his hair curls at the ends when it’s still slightly damp. 

He reels Max in by the waist, disposing of his cap while he does it. 

“I’m not kissing you with that in my face.” 

Max doesn’t so much as protest, just follows Daniel, warm and pliant and chasing his mouth. There’s a nervous tension behind his eyes that Daniel doesn’t recognise. 

_Since when does Max Verstappen look nervous?_

Max is so eager under his mouth, though, so ready to move between Daniel’s hands, and over his thighs. His pulse is racing with it when Daniel settles an experimental palm along the side of his neck, thumb stroking tender circles next to his ear. 

He is flushed with the hot heat of nerves. Daniel recognises the signs from his own youth. So he is sure to keep his dick away from Max, conscious not to grind up into him, even as Max can’t disguise the growing erection pressed against the placket of his jeans. 

Daniel keeps his hands above Max’s shirt, splayed over his back, across his shoulders (so, so wide, how is Max so wide?), and when Max starts squirming in his lap, when it gets to the point that Daniel’s instincts tell him to reach into Max’s pants and bring him off, he pulls back. 

“As much as I would love to keep kissing you all night,” he says, running a teasing thumb over the pout of Max’s bottom lip. His mouth is rubbed raw from Daniel’s beard. It makes something terrible and possessive stir in Daniel’s belly. “I’m jet-lagged as fuck, and you didn’t really sleep much on the flight.” 

“So responsible, all the time, fucking hell,” Max grumbles, teasing. He tries his luck, steals a few more kisses, which Daniel pretends to complain about. “Okay, I take the hint. Old man needs his beauty sleep.” 

Max leaves and, with his back turned, Daniel is free to stare at the way his ass fills his jeans out perfectly.

-

The next time Daniel sees Max, he’s standing in the cereal aisle of the grocery store, deep in thought. Daniel has seen Max less focused in team briefings than he is choosing between cocoa pops and something with marshmallows in. 

The fondly confused expression that follows quick on the heels of Max’s scowl when Daniel creeps up behind him to blow cold air at the back of his neck is almost enough to distract him from Max’s hateful choice in cereal. Almost. 

While he’s in line at the checkout, he pulls up Max’s contact. 

> **You look hot when youre domestic [delivered 12:58]**

The thought of Max reading it and getting that angry flustered expression on his face is quickly replaced by regret. 

_Hours_ pass and Max doesn’t reply. 

They’ve taken jokes further than this before. But that was before the kissing. Maybe Max is uncomfortable now… 

What is the protocol for this? Is he supposed to text him and apologise? Call him? Give him space? 

He dithers for a few more hours, then decides _fuck it_. If he can’t be himself around Max then this kissing business is clearly not meant to last. 

> **I’m making pizza tonight. Come over? [delivered 15:02]**

One of the first things Max says when he shows up, looking soft and amazing once again, is “you know, I’m not even surprised you have a domestic kink. You’re always cooking and shit.” And then he sets about preparing the pizza toppings like it’s an Olympic sport and Daniel thinks, _hmm._

 _Perhaps I’m not the only one with a penchant for providing_. 

**-**

The part of Daniel that is still a caveman, still wants to _feedprovidecare_ , sings in his chest when Max shows up at his door, saying he’s run out of toilet paper. 

Daniel expects Max to use his bathroom, figures he can stick around afterwards and they’ll hang out. He’s just finished a workout but they don’t have to kiss if Max doesn’t want a sweaty Daniel. Or he can shower. 

He’s imagining getting naked and wet while knowing Max is waiting just through the door when Max bounces a toilet roll off Daniel’s shoulder. 

“Thanks mate,” he says, already on his way out the door. “You’re a lifesaver.”

Daniel is left bereft, confused, and half-hard. He takes a shower and imagines Max hadn’t left. 

\- 

Max is always so surprised when Daniel calls him, as if they didn’t spend hours a day on FaceTime over winter break.

To be fair, given that they’re both in Monaco and he’d had Max in his lap again last night, calling him is a bit unnecessary. But he’s in the queue at a restaurant he knows Max would love, and he’s also blatantly aware of the absolute absence of food in Max’s fridge. 

Maybe (probably) Daniel wouldn’t have even thought of ringing him to take his order, but he spots a couple holding hands (are they a couple? Maybe they’re just friends? It’s hard to tell with lesbians, sometimes), and he thinks of Max. 

Once they have both consumed their body weight in pasta, Max swings his legs into Daniel’s lap, so he’s sitting sideways on the sofa with his thighs over Daniel’s and his ankles hanging off the end. It’s an awkward angle for kissing, and they soon rearrange themselves so Daniel is straddling Max, this time. 

It’s a first for them and Daniel is so caught up in the strong bulk of Max underneath him that he forgets to hold back. He catches himself when he starts trying to grind into Max’s abs. Pulls away from Max’s mouth to see him get squirmy and nervous looking. 

Again. 

It makes sense, though. Max has only ever been with girls, Daniel’s pretty sure. Of course he's still hesitant. 

-

It takes a long time to hunt down Max’s strawberry vodkas after Baku. It’s worth it, in the end. If not for the grudging forgiveness in Max’s eyes, then for the taste of sugar on his tongue. 

Max keeps showing up at his door. They sit next to each other on the flight from Baku back to Nice and this time decide to share a car to Monaco. There’s no screen between them and the driver, so they can’t do much, but Daniel does slide his hand over Max’s knee, and Max shifts to knot their ankles together. 

There’s no question about whose apartment they’re going to. Max doesn’t let Daniel even _look_ at the button to his floor, drags him out of the elevator and in his front door with a determination that coils low and heavy in Daniel’s stomach. 

Max kisses him with a newfound ferocity. Up until this point, Daniel had sort of assumed Max was happy to let him take the lead. Sure, he likes sitting on top of Daniel and he can get pretty demanding, but he’s never been this…

“Are you still pissed at me?” Daniel mutters against his mouth.

“Obviously.” Max knocks their noses together, slightly too hard to be entirely joking. “I tried to apologise, but you were just ignoring me.” 

He leans back in just as Daniel goes to reply, so their teeth clink and they soften the kiss for a moment in mutual apology. 

“I didn’t want to yell at you,” Daniel explains. Max has had enough people yell at him in his life. And Daniel prefers to deal with his anger in private. It’s like shitting: one of those things other people don’t need to see. 

Max pulls back enough to roll his eyes. “I can hold my own, you know. We wouldn’t be the first teammates to have a screaming fight.”

He’s not _wrong_ but Daniel hates him, a little, for saying it so easily. 

“Well, if all I am is a ‘teammate’ to you,” Daniel’s thankful to whatever side of his genetic code makes joking second-nature. “Then I don’t think I should be doing this…” And he licks a thick stripe from Max’s Adam’s apple to his chin. The skin is rough with stubble Daniel hadn’t been able to see. 

Max shrieks, and rolls off Daniel, onto the floor. “I hate you.” 

They end up tussling on the carpet for a while, Daniel’s fingers wedged against Max’s ticklish sides, Max playing dirty (as always) and doing his level best to jam his knee into Daniel’s groin. 

When Max weasels his hands under Daniel’s shirt, palms splayed and slightly sweaty, over his shoulder blades, Daniel lets him. He braces himself above Max, leaning over him with his forearms a solid wall either side of his head, his knees knocking into Max’s. 

They kiss, like that, until Daniel’s foot starts threatening to cramp and Max pulls him crashing down on top of him. 

Daniel definitely doesn’t think about the way Max’s breath leaves him in a heavy whoosh. He does, however, excuse himself to the bathroom to give his dick a stern talking to.

-

Max stops visiting Daniel’s apartment because he starts sleeping over. 

They spend so much time around each other, at the track, that it’s inevitable that Daniel’s seen Max fresh out of a shower before. But it’s different, knowing he’d come from the shitty communal paddock showers, than it is watching him walk into Daniel’s bedroom, towel wrapped around his waist, shoulders still glistening. 

When he catches Daniel watching, he gets a stupid look on his face and wriggles his shoulders. 

“Are you trying to be sexy?” Daniel realises, after the second time. 

“What ‘trying’? I _am_ sexy.” 

Max never bothers leaving the room to get dressed. He stands in the corner of Daniel’s room, where he’s dumped his suitcase under the window, and wobbles into his boxers, teetering on one foot, bracing himself against the window frame.

“You’d be a shit gymnast.” Daniel says, to distract himself from staring at Max’s naked ass. 

“Get fucked.” 

Those conversations always end with Max coming back to bed, dripping water onto the sheets, his hair damp against Daniel’s forehead. 

-

Before Max, Daniel would have said his favourite place to make out was the bedroom. 

It’s not that it’s bad with Max. They’ve started watching several movies, only to end up ignoring them in favour of each other’s mouths. The first night he’d stayed over, Max had thrown a thigh over Daniel’s under the sheet and kissed a wet line over his chest and up his neck. 

Falling asleep next to Max makes Daniel an odd mix of horny and alarmingly settled. 

Feeling the warmth of him, knowing the lump under his duvet is the man who Daniel has spent more time with than away from in the past month, is calming more than overwhelming. Daniel kinda expected to be itching to kick Max out, to get some space to himself. 

But that’s the good thing about Max: he has a terrible sleep schedule when it’s not race week, and he’s happy to park himself in front of the simulator or his PlayStation and ignore Daniel.

He gets literally hours to spend alone, with Max nearby. 

It’s annoying because it gives more ammunition to the war Max is waging to get Daniel to admit to having a domesticity kink, but his favourite place to kiss Max is the kitchen.

They don’t spend a lot of time in there, so maybe it’s the novelty of it, but something about crowding up behind Max making their morning coffees, or catching him in front of the fridge and kissing him until the fridge door starts beeping at them warms Daniel all over. 

-

Daniel knows Max is gutted about Monaco. 

He’d been so excited he hadn’t even made Daniel brush his teeth before kissing him good morning. 

“It’s our home race!” Given how many drivers live in Monaco, it shouldn’t feel as good as it does. 

_Our home race_. 

Daniel tries to rein in his excitement at winning. He sees the disappointment in Max’s eyes, no matter how hard he tries to mask it. It doesn’t matter how publically Max congratulates Daniel, he’s thinking it should be him, that he’s the golden boy, he should be winning races, leaving Daniel in his dust… 

His friends ask him if it’s hard, being mates with Max. 

He’s telling the truth when he says it’s not. 

It’s not hard. 

Daniel’s whole job requires him to be able to leave his feelings off-track, to forget how he feels about the other drivers, how much he thinks they deserve a win, too (or how much he thinks they don’t). 

It’s no different with Max. 

Max the Driver is one thing, Max the Person is another. 

Daniel likes Max the Person. Max the Person is the one he gets to kiss, the one he gets to make laugh until he hiccups, the one with the worst bed head in the world, the one who sometimes sleep-talks about Fifa. 

Max the Driver is who Daniel has to compartmentalise - his teammate, his enemy, the one who sulks when something doesn’t go right for him, the centre of gravity pulling in all the focus and dedication that used to be directed at Daniel. 

It’s not like everything is all sunshine and roses with Max the Person. His feet stink, he never cleans up after himself, he gets sullen and bitchy and refuses to explain himself to Daniel, and he’s a demanding little shit. 

But at the same time, Max the Driver shares information about his car with Daniel, keeps him company in his driver’s room, will (occasionally, if he’s winning) concede to helping Daniel out on track. 

So, no. It’s not hard to be friends with Max and be his teammate. 

It _does_ get difficult when Daniel wants to celebrate, take Max out to a club, get drunk and kiss in a taxi on the way home, and he knows all Max is going to want to do is down something sweet and strong and get drunk enough to fall asleep so he can move past the day he finished nine places behind Daniel. 

They compromise. Daniel drags Brendon and Nico and some of the others out, gets pleasantly buzzed off warm alcohol and terrible dancing. He has Max’s key in the pocket of his jeans. 

He’s drunk enough and it’s late enough when they pile out into the street again that he decides to text Max. 

> **gotta rainchekc tonight . stayin a t mine, see u tomorow? [delivered 02:07]**

When he doesn’t get a reply, he assumes Max is asleep. 

-

Daniel wakes up with a killer headache, a dry mouth, and a sore shin where he’d walked into his bed frame. 

He hugs a pillow to his chest and gives himself a few minutes to lie there with his eyes closed, feeling sorry for himself. 

There’s still no text from Max, but it’s after lunch time so he should be awake by now. Daniel considers calling ahead, but Max is always showing up at Daniel’s door unannounced just to tell him about the spider he saw run across his ceiling or complain about his neighbours. 

He knocks on Max’s door, wearing a stretched-out white shirt he spilled red wine on a few years ago. There’s been a little pinkish blush over his heart ever since. Right now, it feels like it’s giving him away. 

He rehearses what he’s going to say to Max to distract himself from the vulnerability of waiting in the corridor in calf-high socks with his knees out. 

Probably something cheesy - “extra special delivery for a Mister Vershtappen? I heard ninth place rosé tastes pretty good”. 

The door opens but it’s not Max who greets him. 

Daniel doesn’t have any right to feel as deflated as he does. 


	5. 2018 - You've been like a light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> title from [here](https://genius.com/Carly-rae-jepsen-heartbeat-lyrics), the song that kicked this whole saga off

“Honestly, mate, it’s fine!” Daniel promises, over the phone. “I wouldn’t have come by if I’d known.”

The look on Daniel’s face when Lea had opened the door is haunting. Max almost feels bad about it. No, okay, he _does_ feel bad about it, but he also feels a little vindicated. 

He hadn’t even had sex with her. 

They’d kissed on his sofa, made it to the bed and he’d _intended_ to ask her to suck him off, maybe go down on her, but the alcohol wiped him out and he’d fallen asleep before they had a chance. 

Not that Daniel needs to know that. 

“Well, it’s okay now,” Max says. He’s alone in his apartment. He kinda wishes Daniel would come back. But he’s pissed at him. Daniel stood him up. “She left. I’m gonna see if any of my mates are around.” 

He keeps his voice purposefully uninviting. He hasn’t checked if anyone is available, but he’s sure Tom and William will definitely be up for something. 

“Anyway,” he says, into the silence. “We’ll catch up before Canada, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Daniel sounds… not angry, but definitely something. 

-

He has every intention of avoiding Daniel in the week and a half between races, but he sees that Netflix has added a movie he knows Daniel keeps talking about. He texts him the next day. 

> _I have popcorn.. Movie night at mine? [delivered 17:27]_

He can’t help himself. He kisses Daniel when he opens the door, rests his head on his shoulder on the couch. 

As always, they end up pausing the movie halfway through, migrating to Max’s bed. 

They keep their clothes on, no matter how many times Max slides his hands under Daniel’s shirt. Daniel smiles against his mouth, rubs his thumbs over Max’s hip bones through his shorts. He smells amazing. 

So much better than Lea. 

\- 

Max kicks Daniel in the balls the Saturday before the race in Montreal. 

Daniel started it, tripping Max just before the steps into the Red Bull team plane - nothing dangerous but enough to send Max stumbling and blushing up a storm. While he was sleeping, Max gathered all the packets of salt he could bludge off the team and emptied them into Daniel’s drink bottle. 

He’d been rewarded by Daniel kissing him breathless as soon as they reached their hotel. He’d woken up to Daniel tying the legs of his jeans together, sitting on the backs of Max’s naked calves. 

It’s letting Daniel get out some… jealousy? (frustration? confusion? whatever) about the Lea situation. Because no matter how much he insists it’s fine, he doesn’t care, Max can see that he’s a bit shaken by it. 

He considers telling Daniel it really was nothing. 

He’d been lonely and pissed off that Daniel was bailing on him. Max had finished ninth. He hadn’t wanted to celebrate with Daniel but he’d also figured he might be able to play the pity card, convince Daniel to stay the night. 

Usually, he’d recoil from the thought of someone’s pity. Especially Daniel’s. But necking is necking. 

Anyway, it hadn’t worked. Daniel had texted him, assumed he’d be welcome at Max’s in the morning. 

He _would have_ been welcome, but the assumption had rankled. It made Max, already elbow deep in a sulk about his chances of ever fighting for world champion, feel cheap. Easy. They’ve never talked about what they’re doing. Max could just be the closest warm mouth Daniel can be bothered to find. 

It had seemed like a good idea to text Lea. 

So he _could_ tell Daniel. But that would mean admitting to that whole thought process and Max is barely able to look over his shoulder at his own feelings. He’s not about to show them off to someone _else_. 

Besides, he likes squabbling with Daniel. Friendly banter, firm hands on each other in public, easy to explain away. 

They’re in Daniel’s hotel room. Max is half-watching the tail end of some artsy looking French film, half-ignoring Daniel deconstruct his performance in qualifying. 

He grunts in response to Daniel’s, “are you even listening?” and then he’s being tackled off the couch and onto the floor. “You’re not. You’re ignoring me.” 

“I’m listening! You’re pissy about your engine again. Or your tyres. Or all the extra weight in your helmet from that great big hea-” 

Daniel chooses that moment to take advantage of the fact their shared training sessions have revealed that Max is horrifically ticklish. 

It’s only reasonable that Max retaliates. He’s intending to just throw Daniel off, maybe make him knock his elbow against the sofa, but he misjudges and his heel lands directly between Daniel’s legs. 

Once Daniel has uncurled and stopped making horrible breathless whimpers, Max laughs hard enough to hurt. 

Daniel pushes him back down, doesn’t let him make the kiss deeper, just lies on top of Max and _barely_ touches his mouth. Even he runs out of patience, eventually, and they migrate to the bed. 

This time, Max settles himself over Daniel. He rucks his shirt up a little and presses his palm flat against his stomach. Daniel is so warm, all over, all the time. A portable Australian summer. Daniel shivers under Max’s hand. 

“Good?” 

Daniel nods. 

“Get it off then,” he says, already sitting up to pull his own shirt off. Daniel levers himself up just enough to get his shirt over his shoulders, and Max stares at the tense and pull of his abdomen. Daniel is so smooth. He plasters their chests together the second Daniel’s shirt hits the floor. 

“I’m so horny.” Max presses wet, sucking kisses across Daniel’s chest. 

He can feel Daniel’s dick against his thigh. They’ve got a race tomorrow, he knows it’s a terrible idea to have sex now, but Daniel doesn’t have to stick it in. He shifts a little, takes his weight on one elbow and reaches down to the waist of Dan’s shorts. 

Daniel’s groan fills Max’s chest, makes him feel ten feet tall, invincible, wondrous. When Daniel rolls his hips, Max moans in response, then gets a short sharp shock when Daniel carefully rolls him off onto the mattress next to him. 

“It’s pretty late.” 

Max stares at him. Daniel isn’t even trying to disguise his erection. He glares pointedly at his own crotch. 

_What do you think you’re doing, you idiot?_

“I’m gonna take a shower and hit the hay. You can have first dibs in the morning.” 

Max hates that Daniel knows Max prefers to shower in the morning, but he’s never seen his dick. 

\- 

After Canada, Max starts wondering. 

They’ve been kissing for three months. Max knows for a fact that Daniel isn’t afraid of casual sex. Or even semi-casual sex. 

He’s seen enough of his partners paraded through their hotels over the years to be more than aware of Daniel’s appetite. So it’s not that he’s holding out for marriage, or something. And Max is fairly certain that Daniel’s had sex with men before. If either of them should be freaking out, it should be Max. 

He has become an expert at both pretending Daniel _isn’t_ having sex with someone who isn’t him, and imagining what it would look like. He’d figured once they started kissing, that would be that. 

But apparently not. At first, every time Daniel realised Max was hard, he’d roll away, make some excuse to leave. That was fine. Max was happy to take it slow. But there’s slow and then there’s whatever _this_ is. 

They share a bed more often than they sleep alone. They’ve started mistaking whose underwear is whose. Max has a razor and a second toothbrush in Daniel’s bathroom, and Daniel has his hair stuff and his own toothbrush at Max’s.

The fact that they’ve never seen each other naked - not properly at least, a glance here and there in changing rooms and a flash of bare ass getting out of the shower don’t count - is ridiculous. Max was fucking all his girlfriends _months_ before they had a dedicated side of the bed. 

His friends don’t even know, so he can’t complain to them. 

It’s not that he’s ashamed of Daniel, nothing like that. But it’s a lot easier to explain that he’s getting off with a guy than it is to say that all they’ve done is kiss. 

They’d be more surprised that Max hasn’t got an orgasm out of it yet, than the fact that it’s Daniel. 

If Daniel were a girl, Max would have complained to his mates for a night or two, then would have sucked it up and asked her what was going on. And if she wanted to take it slow, he’d have either waited or broken it off. 

Realistically, he would have broken it off. 

Instead, Max is in Daniel’s bed in Monaco. The room is dark around them, but Daniel’s apartment is high enough that they don’t need to worry about pulling the curtains. The golden yellow glow of the city casts just enough light through the window to illuminate the bed. 

Max is wearing his briefs and a white shirt that belongs to Daniel. It fits slightly snugger on Max than it does on Daniel, but it’s comfortable - still big enough to sit loose and low over Max’s collarbones. Daniel is snoring next to him, dead to the world, awkwardly twisted in a way that Max knows will wreak havoc on his back in the morning. 

(How has he been allowed to know this? How can he look at Daniel in the low dusk of the room, intimate and familiar, and _know_ him?)

Daniel is lying on his back, shoulders flat against the mattress, his legs twisted at the hips, curled on their sides and facing away from Max. The sheets are bunched around his waist, stark white against the tan of his skin. 

He’s shirtless - always too warm in the night, like his body remembers where it’s from and starts projecting memories of home across the bed - but wearing a pair of long sleep pants. The one's Max teases him for, incessantly. 

They’ve had a long day. They’d each had meetings in the morning so they’d met up after lunch, after which Daniel had dragged Max up a hill. He’d kissed him at the top of it, overlooking the ocean and bordered by trees, until they’d heard footsteps on the path. 

Daniel had made dinner, bullied Max into peeling vegetables and stirring a pot. He’d kept touching Max, his elbow, his waist, his shoulder, and by the time they’d finished eating Max had been ready to pull Daniel on top of him and settle there - surrounded and warmed and calm. 

Now, Max’s mouth is bruised and his chin is scraped red from Daniel’s beard. He should be falling asleep, but instead he’s staring out at the water, watching the crescent moon dip in and out of cloud cover, wondering. 

It doesn’t make sense for Daniel to not want sex. 

It’s not a libido problem. Max has felt his erections. He’s seen Daniel leave the bathroom, flushed and relaxed. 

There was a day or two when Max worried that Daniel just wasn’t attracted to him. But the heat in Daniel’s glances, the possessive touches, the way he holds Max against him and presses himself against Max put that thought to bed very quickly.

If he’s having sex with other people, that’s fine. Their trainers are constantly collecting their piss, testing it to within an inch of its existence, so they don’t have to worry about diseases. And Max is realistic: they’re teammates. Neither of them are in this for the long term, are they? 

Kissing Daniel is nice, it’s lovely, so it only stands to reason that sex must be just as good. 

So the fact that sex doesn’t even seem to be on the table is… well, it’s baffling and infuriating. 

Here’s the thing. Max is never going to be an emotional-let’s-share-our-feelings sort of guy. That’s not who he is. 

And yes, sure, he’s pretty vocal on the team radio but that’s because communication is contracted in and stops him from dying. It’s still a pain in the ass. He doesn’t need to tell his engineers what he’s doing every second of every race. It’s ridiculous. Just shut up and let him drive. 

Relationships don’t need communication like that. 

No one is going to get hurt if he doesn’t pour his heart out every night. It’s not going to do anyone any good if he tells them the bitter scared feelings in the pit of his chest. What good are feelings like that? They eat _Max_ up so what good would they do in a relationship? 

They’d kill it. 

Instantly. 

High speed crash into a wall. Not even salvageable. 

There’s a part of him that comes out when even his neighbours are silent and his eyes are too dry to focus on the sim screen that gets self-reflective and he wonders if the full-body flinching from feelings comes from being a child of divorce. When the wrong question, a joke which landed too close to home could send the whole house into a week of stormy silence. 

His emotions exist on a scale between ‘ _Can I Deal With This Alone?_ ’ and ‘ _Will I Die If I Don’t Ask For Help?_ ’ 

And, okay, he talks to the other guys in the paddock. He knows they’ve all got dysfunction falling out their ears. Not a single one of them would have got to where they are without a little more self-reliance than your average person. 

But Max sees Pierre and Carlos and, yes, Daniel, admit when they make mistakes and speak up when they’re not quite understanding something in the car. His engineers tell him he needs to be more vocal with his needs, that that’s what they’re there for - to help him. 

But Max thinks he could have two broken legs and a concussion and still pull himself out of a crash without help. 

Max grew up lonely in a way that was so surrounded by people he didn’t even realise it. His father funneled him from championship to championship, never stopping to let Max look around and question why the other boys were having sleepovers without him, and playing football in the field beside the karting track. 

He wasn’t raised to be heartfelt. 

His true self is something for the bathroom mirror to see and no one else. It doesn’t matter if there are things deep in his heart that he wants to share with Daniel. 

It doesn’t matter that sometimes he lies awake and wonders _what are we doing? What is this? What’s wrong with me? When was the last time you kissed someone who wasn’t me and were you wishing it was?_

They aren’t questions that will do their… whatever this is any good. It’ll open a hole in their easy camaraderie and it’ll fester and grow tender and bitter and that will be the end of that. Not worth it. 

-

People are always telling Max to stop talking so much and start doing. This seems like a good time to put it into practice. 

He starts in France. It seems fitting. Daniel is always going on about how French is the language of love, although Max personally has seen Charles, Esteban, and Pierre do things that instantly discredit _that_ stereotype. 

“I’ve told him if he beats me in the race, I’ll beat him off in our hotel.” Max enjoys watching Daniel’s face redden and his handler’s eyes darken. This will be another outlet she has to chase down with a contract and a fervent plea to remove a seven second sound bite. 

Max slips out of the rest of the pre-race PR. He next sees Daniel lining up for lunch. He’s about to take the last chocolate muffin. Max reaches around him from behind and snatches it off his tray. When Daniel goes to grab it back, Max pulls away. 

“Nope! You don’t need a sweet snack when you’ve already got me!” 

Daniel’s eyes follow him out of the room and don’t stop watching him until they’re both sliding helmets on at the start line. 

Max makes sure to save at least half the bottle of champagne from his second-place finish. He shows up to (their) Daniel’s hotel room with it. 

“Can I interest you in some second-place champagne?” 

Daniel’s eyes seem to stall around Max’s stomach where he’s still wearing his white fireproofs, still wet with alcohol and clinging to his skin. 

He thinks, for a moment, that he’s done it. That all Daniel needed was a few ill-advised dirty jokes and Max in a wet shirt. Daniel’s kiss seems more frantic than usual. There’s something more searching in it, something that makes Max’s dick perk up and his nerves kick into overdrive. _Shit, should he have showered? He should have showered._

But Daniel settles them both on the bed, the champagne between them, and just holds Max’s hand. It’s nice - Daniel’s hands are warm, slightly calloused - but it’s not what Max came here for. 

He slides his ankle over Daniel’s, runs his socked toes along Daniel’s instep where he knows he’s ticklish. “Come here,” he tugs on Daniel’s shoulder, twists him sideways to face him. “I came second. I deserve a reward.” 

“Oh,” Daniel sighs, already grinning. “What a hardship for me.” He bumps their noses together, gets his hand over the jut of Max’s chin. Max presses into him, ignoring the wet spill of alcohol against his thigh and the sheets, manoeuvres himself so he’s more in Daniel’s lap than out of it. 

“This is lovely,” he sighs, into Daniel’s mouth. He isn’t even thinking of the plan at this point, not really. It really is nice. He feels warm all over. Daniel rumbles into his mouth, his teeth grazing over Max’s bottom lip. Max whines and this time, it’s intentional. He’s noticed Daniel responds well to noise. 

Sure enough, Daniel’s stomach contracts under Max’s touch and his hips make a barely perceptible jerk upward. He keeps the kiss going longer than he usually would, so Max _really_ starts thinking it’s worked, but then Daniel moves, planting one of his hands on the mattress between them (like he would if he were about to press Max into the bed) and he stops. 

“Oh, shit.” It’s not a good _oh shit_. “Your champagne!” He pulls up and off and _away_. He looks between Max, who is already halfway to sprawled on his back in anticipation, and the puddle of alcohol. “Sorry you didn’t get the full champagne shower you were after.” 

There’s a smile playing around his lips and Max’s dick really, really likes that. It seems like whatever Daniel does, Max is into. If only it worked the same way in reverse. 

-

They don’t see a lot of each other between France and Austria. Daniel makes a flying visit to Monaco - just enough time to pack a bag, take a shower, and deliver a home cooked meal and a kiss to Max - before he leaves to Italy for the week. 

It’s odd, not having him around. Max wouldn’t say he _misses_ Daniel, not exactly, but he feels a little purposeless. 

Which makes it sound like Max needs Daniel around to function. 

He doesn’t. He’s spent most of his life cultivating a careful, studied self-sufficiency. But that’s exactly what it is. Studied. 

From the outside looking in, it’s easy to think that Max is the reticent one, more comfortable in his own company than he is making friends. And Max didn’t set out to convince the media that he’s a lone wolf, but it _is_ convenient. It’s like Daniel says - it’s easy for people to take advantage when you’re known as the Smile of the Paddock. 

But Max, the real Max, the one who exists even when he’s not in a car, doesn’t want to have to work at being aloof all the time. He wants contact, wants to let people in and be let in, in turn. It sticks with him, probably has for his whole life - the craving just below the surface for a warm touch, a caring glance. 

Even before they started kissing, Daniel filled that void for Max.

It’s why there’s an itch at the base of Max’s brain that tells him Daniel is pulling away, that he should reach out and grab him before he slips beneath the surface of the water and escapes for good. 

There’s no reason for Max to feel like that. Daniel and he text almost every day, even if it’s just Daniel sending him photos of an angry looking cat and the caption ‘you’. He still makes sure Max is eating a proper dinner when they’re in the same country. 

But they have stopped talking about racing, as much. Which terrifies Max. Because what if it’s the only thing they have in common? What if, once Daniel stops running through the highlights of the race with Max and asking his opinion on engine modes, what if everything else falls away, too? 

He tells himself he’s being ridiculous. He’s overreacting. And about what? What’s he going to say - ‘oh, my friend with benefits might be pulling away from me, except we don’t really have benefits, and he’s also my teammate, so I guess really he’s my close colleague with kissing privileges’? 

It makes it worse, then, when Daniel’s car breaks down in Austria, and instead of getting the celebratory podium finish and bottle of wine that Max had _hoped_ for Daniel’s birthday, he gets another DNF. 

Instead of shuffling from the podium to an awaiting car back to the hotel together, Max has to chase Daniel down in the garage. 

“I’m not going out tonight,” Max tells him. “You shouldn’t either.”

“I shouldn’t eithe- What do you mean? Why? It’s my birthday, I didn’t finish the race. I’m getting drunk, mate.” 

“You can still drink!” _Just as long as it’s not too much._ Max needs them both to be relatively sober. “Just… alone in our hotel room. With me.” 

It physically hurts Max to say it. He’s picked spinach out of Daniel’s teeth, Daniel has sneezed right into his face before. Asking Daniel to stay in and drink with him is hardly the most embarrassing thing he’s done. And yet… 

Daniel’s pause is longer than it usually is. Can a pause be longer than it usually is if Daniel has never paused before? 

“I promise it will be worth it?” He hates the tremor in his voice, the reminder of youth he can’t shake. Daniel looks between Max and the team packing up around them. 

Max is treated to the whiplash of Daniel agreeing but then refusing to leave the track together. “I’m just worried. About how it looks, ya know?”

Any anxiety Max had felt before pales in comparison to the way it feels to hear that. 

Daniel knocks on Max’s door a few hours later. He’d text Max when he was leaving the track, asked if he needed to bring any drinks or if Max’s winner’s bonus had it covered. 

Daniel is bringing up Max’s podiums a lot more, this season. He doesn’t think it’s a good thing. 

“Yeah, come in!” Max calls. 

He is standing behind the dining table, a small round thing, barely big enough for dinner for two. 

While Daniel was away, he’d ordered room service. A full three course meal for the two of them, wine (red and white because he’s seen Daniel drink both), candles, a vase of roses in the centre of the white linen table cloth. He fights to keep his face blank while Daniel appraises the room. 

“Well,” Daniel says. He doesn’t say anything else, just keeps standing there, feet away, starting between Max and the table, Max and the table. He’s changed into a pair of dark sweatpants and a white t-shirt. Max feels ridiculous in his tight blue dress shirt and skinny jeans. 

He holds up a bottle of wine, just for something to do with his hands. “I got us a, uh, chardonnay. It’s from the Murray River? Apparently. The people said it goes well with schnitzel. So, uh… have a seat. And, you know, happy birthday and all that.” 

It’s awkward as hell, to start with. Their cutlery drags against their plates, the table isn’t big enough to accommodate two fully grown men so their knees knock together which, under ordinary circumstances, wouldn’t be a problem. 

They’ve never sat and ate a meal at a table like this before. Not in private. Lunch in the Red Bull catering centre, sure. But that’s a whole different thing - that’s like a school lunch. This is… Well, this is a date, isn’t it? 

Max hadn’t thought of it like that, but that’s what it is. He’s asked Daniel to his room (the fact that all Daniel’s things are here and he lost his room key days ago doesn’t matter) on his birthday, put on a romantic meal, and plied him with wine. It’s a date. 

Slowly, though, somewhere between the second bottle of wine and the start of dessert, the atmosphere lightens. 

Max puts some music on in the background, something soft he took straight from Daniel’s playlist, and they remember to laugh with each other, again. Max captures Daniel’s feet between his own. Daniel dips his fingers into his glass and flicks droplets of wine at Max’s face. He leans across the table to kiss it off. 

It doesn’t go further than that, though. Daniel announces that he’s eaten enough to feed a small village. Max pushes him toward the bed, fully expecting to return from brushing his teeth in the bathroom to find him loose and pliant on the bed, but he’s passed out face down in Max’s pillow. 

He sighs, but can’t bring himself to be disappointed. 

Daniel asleep is so peaceful.

Seeing the lack of tension in his face, in his muscles, really emphasises how much this season has taken out of him. 

Max is trying to make it better for him, but when he’s always at the centre of the frustration, there’s only so much he can do. To let Daniel sleep, to give him the space to be loose and at ease, is an easy one. 

Max strips down to his boxers and slides under Daniel’s arm. He is, as always, so so warm. 

He falls asleep quickly, the alcohol and the smell of Daniel pushing him over the edge quicker than usual. He wakes up with Daniel’s drool on his bare shoulder and a crick in his neck. It’s worth it, though, for the way Daniel smiles blearily at him and presses his face into Max’s neck. 

“I should let you plan birthdays more often.” 

\- 

Daniel is so good to Max, is the thing. He jokes that Max doesn’t know when to shut up, but he’ll always listen. He listens, and then he asks questions, follows up on what he’s said the next day. Max isn’t used to people giving a shit about him as anything more than a driver. 

It’s easy, with Daniel. 

Maybe it’s that Max has never been with a man before, but his other relationships have felt like auditions. Like he’s had to _prove_ himself - that he’s worthy, that he isn’t just arrogance and aggression, that he can do it. 

At the time, he didn’t recognise it, but looking back he doesn’t think he’s ever cared enough about a relationship to want to prove it properly. 

The questions he’d had in Daniel’s bed in Monaco - _what are we doing, what’s wrong with me, why won’t Daniel_ touch _me_ \- still haunt him. And it’s terrifying. It rocks Max to the core, unsettles him, forces himself to look himself in the mirror and ask if he’s ever really known himself. 

If anyone had asked him, even a year ago, whether he’d be putting this much effort into seducing someone he’s been kissing for months, he’d have laughed in their face. 

But Daniel does so much for Max. He does so much for him and gets so little in return, and after the double failures of France and Austria, Max is starting to suspect that Daniel is just waiting for Max to do something for him. 

Max cajoles Daniel out to a club in the off-week between Silverstone and Hockenheim. Clubs have always been good to them, in the past. 

“You finally got a result in the points! It’s worth celebrating!” 

“You’re such a shit.” Daniel is stretched across Max’s sofa, sun-dappled and sleepy. “Did you say you’d buy me drinks?” 

“You say that like I never do.” 

“We-ell…” Daniel sits up to pull a face at Max. “You do kinda lean into the age difference sometimes.” The tone of his voice is ever-so-subtly off and if Max weren’t existing in a state of constant high alert when it comes to Daniel, he’d probably miss it. 

He doesn’t miss it. 

“You don’t think I do enough?” _I would do things, if you’d let me_ , he thinks uncharitably. 

“That’s not what I said.” Daniel tugs him down next to him. He kisses his cheek. “But I _do_ buy you a lot of dinners. You’re a kept man, baby.” 

It’s not the first time Daniel has broken out a pet name, but it’s uncommon enough that Max’s stomach still ricochets off his ribs. 

“I’ll make sure to change that, tonight, then.” 

\- 

> _Gotta run an errand. I’m driving tonight, will pick you up from yours [sent 18:42]_
> 
> **Vague and intriguing… you trying to turn me on? [delivered 18:45]**

_Yes!_ Max wants to dial Daniel’s phone and scream at him. _Yes, I am! I have been for literally months but you’re either too blind or too straight to give a shit._

He knocks at Daniel’s door a few hours later, a dark denim jacket buttoned halfway over his shirt. Daniel’s gaze lingers around his neck. 

“No cap tonight. He’s learning.” 

Max forgets his plan for a brief moment and lets himself be pulled in by the waist. He comes back to himself after a few long kisses, enough to nip at Daniel’s lip and grin at the sharp breath it draws out of him. 

“So,” he tucks the fingers of one hand into Daniel’s belt loops. “I’m going to be buying you drinks all night, you’re not going to know what’s hit you.” 

He holds Daniel’s hand between their seats the whole drive to the club. Their palms stick together with sweat but Max couldn’t care less. Daniel keeps looking at him, like if he takes his eyes off Max he will disappear. Max has a very, very good feeling about this night.

He parks up and takes his jacket off while Daniel gets out of the car. He slings his sunglasses through the collar of his shirt, partly because he’s seen the way Daniel’s gaze lingers on the little strip of skin it reveals, but also because he's self-conscious of his shirt. 

It had been a Christmas present from one of his mates. A gag gift. A simple black t-shirt with ‘DADDY’ printed across the front in bold white capitals. He’d put it in his wardrobe and forgotten about it until Daniel had said he was leaning too much into the age difference and letting Daniel take care of him too much.

When he’d been looking at himself in the mirror, it had seemed like a good idea. Now, standing in the middle of the night with Daniel pressed along his side, it seems like the choice of an immature teenager. 

He’s certain Daniel will see it, laugh, maybe make a joke, and Max will blush and regret all his life decisions and then they’ll both get blind drunk and that will be that. He’ll put the shirt back in his wardrobe and forget all about it. 

But Daniel doesn’t notice the shirt. 

As soon as they get inside, he pulls Max’s back flat against his chest and hooks his chin over his shoulder. It makes Max smile, the way Daniel is always pretending he’s tall enough for them to dance like that. 

“I was promised alcohol?” he mutters, after several songs have passed. Their bodies are already sticking together with sweat. Max feels filthy and thrilled. He ducks away from Daniel and towards the bar. 

When he returns, two obnoxiously bright blue drinks in hand, Daniel is bobbing up and down on the spot, eyes fixed on the gap in the crowd he’d last seen Max disappear into. He starts to yell something (definitely about Max’s shit taste in drinks) but then his eyes drift down to Max’s chest and his brain visibly stalls. 

His mouth is half-open, eyes fixated on the front of Max’s shirt. Max concentrates on keeping his face blank, on not letting his sudden shock of nerves show in his stride. He stops just in front of Daniel, holds out a drink. 

Daniel’s fingers are hot and slippery with sweat when he takes the glass from him. 

“Like what you see?” Max angles his hip to one side, knowing Daniel won’t be able to resist following the line of his thigh in his jeans. 

Instead of answering, Daniel stretches his free hand over the middle of Max’s back and pulls him in, kissing him for long enough that they both forget about their drinks and spill sticky alcohol down their wrists. They finish their glasses in quick, gulping mouthfuls and Max disappears to buy them another round. 

Daniel can’t keep his hands off him. He’s sure his plan would have worked, if they weren’t both so drunk at the end of the night. Too drunk for anything like what Max wants. 

\- 

Daniel DNFs in Hockenheim. Again. 

Max takes home a P4 and he knows he could have done better, he should have done better, could have brought home a trophy, something actually valuable to the team. With Daniel getting worse results than him, Max would usually try to ignore his own disappointment and focus on Daniel. Cheer him up. 

How it usually unfolds is Daniel will disappear into his driver’s room, Max will rattle around the garage for a bit before he’s sent off to collect Daniel for their press run. If Max made a podium, he’ll coax some alcohol into Daniel. In the absence of champagne, he’ll kiss him a little bit and rub his shoulders until the tense anger leaves him. 

He’ll send Daniel filthy glances across the media pen when he can, which usually works wonders, and then they’ll sit knee to knee in their post-race team meetings. They usually retreat to Max’s hotel room, and he’ll fuck around on his phone or on the PlayStation while Daniel sprawls on the bed and calls his mum. 

After that, it’s a toss up between whether they order room service and watch a movie on the sofa, or if they order room service and Daniel lets himself be persuaded into playing Fifa. Max will let Daniel curl himself around Max’s back while they fall asleep, and he’ll let Daniel get a few minutes of snoring in before he kicks at him and wriggles out of his grip.

It’s clear that’s not going to work today. 

When Max knocks at Daniel’s door, he’s met with stony silence. Daniel has a tendency to sit in silence when he’s pissed off, forget the outside world exists for a bit. Max is hardly a tentative person. He’s got no qualms about opening a closed door without permission. 

“Daniel?” 

“I knew it would be you.” 

Daniel is lying flat on his back on his massage table, knees bent and socked feet planted just under his ass. It looks wildly uncomfortable. 

“So I’ve got no alcohol today-” he’s about to offer to buy Daniel a whole mini-fridge of alcohol when they get back to the hotel but he doesn’t get the chance. 

“I’m not in the mood, Max.” 

_What._

Max stands there, between the half-open door and a half-sprawled Daniel, blinking. 

“I know you’re pissed about the fourth place and I’ll listen to you bitch about it later, but right now I just want to be alone.” Daniel must notice the silence Max has let fill the room, because he opens his eyes and twists to face Max. “Okay?” His voice is soft, this time. Asking Max to understand. 

“Yeah.” What he _wants_ to do is kiss Daniel and then yell at him for a bit about assuming Max is only there to complain about himself. He refuses to let his voice crack. “You’ve got my room key, right?” He knows he does. He’d been the one to slip it into the pocket of Daniel’s jeans that morning. 

The question he’s really asking is _will you use it?_

“Right.” Daniel closes his eyes again, a silent request for Max to leave. 

Max knows Daniel’s reaction is only natural. Max keeps out-performing him. When it’s Max sitting in the garage, useless and impotent, there’s a not insignificant part of him that resents Daniel for his position on track. 

Daniel is usually so careful to disguise that resentment, though. He’s better than Max in so many ways - he’d rather keep his anger private than air it for the world to see. Max admires that about him. But sometimes, he wishes Daniel would just let himself be angry. 

He’s worried that if he bottles it up for too long it will fester and he’ll start to project his feelings about Max the Driver onto Max the Person. He’s worried that he’s already started to.

Their whole job involves compartmentalising those two things. But Max is more than aware of how difficult it can become to keep the two separate. 

He also knows that sometimes, the best thing to do is just to get rid of the pressure. A bottle doesn’t fizz over if you let a little air out. 

What better way to let pressure out than in bed? 

If they were already sleeping together, Max supposes he’d just lock Daniel in their hotel room and get naked. The problem is, Daniel doesn’t seem to want to stick around long enough to let Max get naked. 

He’s already tried whining, and being suggestive, and oh god, being romantic with the flowers and the wine and everything, and none of it had worked. Clearly Max is just going about it the wrong way. 

Daniel doesn’t strike him as the rough type, but he’s already surprised Max once by being gay, so there’s no reason he can’t do it again. 

When Daniel knocks on the door that night ( he always knocks before he unlocks the door, so Max knows he’s there) Max tucks his legs under himself on the sofa and puts his back to the door. He opens a game on his phone and ignores his instinct to look up at Daniel. 

He knows he’ll be fresh from a shower. 

His hair will be curling around his ears and along his forehead, and it will be plastered flat to his skull at the back. It always makes Max a little edgy, seeing Daniel with wet hair. He’s hyper-aware of Daniel’s fragility, his mortality, the fact that beneath it all, the smile and the laughter and the colourful helmets, is a crown of bone that fits perfectly in Max’s palm. 

Daniel doesn’t say anything when he comes in. He often doesn’t. The two of them can talk for hours, on and on about nothing, collating new inside jokes and dredging up old ones - memories Max wants to plaster to the sides of his car like sponsorship deals and ones he’d rather keep to the protected stretch of air between them. 

But they also spend a lot of time alone, together. 

It means Max fucking around on his sim, half-maintaining a conversation with his mates and half-ignoring whatever Daniel is doing. 

It means Daniel telling Max he needs some time alone and going to sit on Max’s balcony instead of making the trip back to his apartment. 

It means the two of them walking around each other in the kitchen, eating an apple, making a coffee, not speaking and not needing to. 

Usually, though, there’s a physical acknowledgement. Max will nod at him, Daniel will touch his shoulder, they’ll throw a used napkin at each other. 

Max keeps his eyes fixed on his phone. Daniel sits at the other end of the sofa, right next to Max’s feet. If he looked up he’d be staring right at him. He doesn’t move.

His phone chirps at him, a message from his mum, congratulating him. 

He doesn’t even look at Daniel. “Hey, mama.” When she asks what he’s up to, he tells her he’s alone. “Just chilling in my room.” 

This is part of their routine, too. Except usually Max has his feet in Daniel’s lap and he puts his mum on speaker phone, lets her know Daniel is there.

This time, though, Max just wants to complain. Daniel’s comment from the track - “I’ll listen to you bitch about it later” - sticks with him. If Daniel wants to be angry at him, Max will give him an excuse to be angry at him. 

“I had such a shit race,” he tells his mum, dropping his voice to something young and petulant. “We should have gotten third at least. It’s just bullshit. I’m so much better than this, why am I even here if I can’t get results!”

It’s all true; all of the dark insecurities Max carries with him. But he knows Daniel is going to read it as Max implying that if fourth place is bad, anything less isn’t even worth mentioning. 

He watches Daniel over the tops of his knees for the duration of the call, watching with grim satisfaction as Daniel does indeed grow tenser and tenser. 

He doesn’t say anything, though, when Max hangs up.

“Hi,” Max says, eventually. 

“Sorry about earlier.” 

“It’s whatever. I’m not a girl, we don’t have to be all lovely with each other every single day.” 

Daniel gives him a wary look. “How was mum?”

It’s just the way Daniel speaks, but the absence of a possessive pronoun, the way it sounds like he’s staking some sort of claim to Sophie, too, makes Max feel a lot like the girl he’d just denied being. 

_Is this what his girlfriends have felt around him? Is the churning, thrilled fire in his chest a side effect of being with a man?_

“She was fine.” Max puts his phone down. He gets up on his knees and stretches into Daniel’s space. “I don’t want to talk about her. You should just kiss me.” He doesn’t wait for Daniel to move, just muscles his way into his lap. His knees dig into the back of the sofa, pinning Daniel’s hips between them. 

Max starts biting at him almost immediately. He pulls away when Daniel tries to gentle the kiss, ducks down to mouth at his neck. He gets his hands in Daniel’s hair and pulls, just a little, just enough to make Daniel grunt above him. 

“C’mere,” Daniel murmurs and max thinks _yes! Finally. This is it._ But his fingers are gentle on Max’s face. “What’s going on, Max?” 

“Nothing,” he shakes his head out of Daniel’s grip. “It’s annoying no one crashed into you, isn’t it. At least if you had someone to blame you could pretend I was him.” 

Maybe Daniel just needs some prompting. Max will just needle him about his result for long enough that the heat of the moment gets Daniel naked in his bed. 

“Unless you’re into engines? You are a bit weird, like that. Maybe that’s why the car won’t work for you. It’s scared of you. You’re coming on too strong.” Daniel shifts under him, but his hands remain hovering in the air around Max, still not touching him. Max clenches his thighs around Daniel. “If I kiss you again, are you going to pretend I’m an engine?” 

Daniel’s face doesn’t drop its hesitant confusion, but his hands do at least settle around Max’s waist. He lifts his chin for Max, and Max thinks he might finally be about to take some action, but Daniel keeps the kiss soft and slow. 

Max pulls back abruptly, gets off Daniel’s lap. “Aren’t you bored of this?” 

“What?” Daniel looks lost, starting up at him, lap empty and hands still shaped around the ghost of Max. 

“This! You must be bored. We don’t do _anything_! We just take turns failing on track and then we come back here and spend hours being bored and pissed off at ourselves. Don’t you wish you were doing something else?” 

_Do you wish you were doing someone else?_

He’d hoped if he pushed Daniel far enough, it would work. Instead he stands up, shaking his head. The hair at the back of his head has dried in a funny spiral from where it’s been pressed against the couch. 

“Okay, clearly you’re in some sort of mood tonight. I’ll leave you to it.” He gathers his phone, the sweatshirt he’d taken off when he’d arrived, and claps Max on the shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” 

Max watches him leave. 

Daniel said he’d see him tomorrow, which implies that he’s still happy to share a plane home with Max, so Max knows he’s forgiven, but _still_. He doesn’t know what more he can do. He knows he was being a brat, but that had been the point. 

Daniel hasn’t responded to _anything_ Max has done. Nothing. It’s got to be something Max is doing (or not doing) but he’s out of ideas. Maybe it’s his character. He’s been told plenty of times that he’s hard to deal with. 

But Daniel laughs with him, seems to genuinely enjoy his company. And they’ve been around each other long enough that Daniel has seen all the personalities Max has to offer. Even the worst ones. And he’s stayed. 

The only other thing he can think of - the _only other thing_ \- is that it’s about the team. Christian and Helmut are weird about the way their drivers are perceived in public.

As much as they like portraying Max as a cold-hearted playboy, they draw a line between how blunt he’s allowed to be and how many girls he’s allowed to be photographed near. They do the same with Daniel. It’s all fun and games, having the joker and the yes-man of the paddock race for you, but there comes a time that they want him to dial back the laughter, to act like a man twice his age again. 

It’s the same with the two of them. The media team can edit as many videos of Daniel and Max together as they like, but when push comes to shove, Red Bull is home to two very masculine, very serious and focused men. 

Kissing your teammate isn’t allowed to factor into that. 

It’s what it must be. It would explain Daniel not wanting to talk about racing as much, it would explain his reluctance to do more than rub circles over Max’s hip bones through his shorts. It would explain the air of frustration Max picks up on around Daniel in driver’s briefings. 

It being the team holding Daniel back is a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand, it means there’s nothing Max can do to _fix_ it other than convince Daniel that fucking him would be the ultimate fuck you to Christian and Helmut. Which is a conversation he doesn’t imagine Daniel would appreciate having in the bedroom. 

But on the other hand, it means that Daniel isn’t rejecting anything specific about Max. 

Probably.


	6. 2018 - Hold the hand inside you (Daniel's Interlude)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> title from [here](https://genius.com/Andrew-belle-fade-into-you-lyrics)

Daniel is exhausted. Plain and simple. 

He tries his best, every day when he wakes up, to put a positive face on, to look at the sun on the horizon and be thankful that he’s alive for another day, that he’s got this opportunity. He’s one of the best drivers in the world. In one of the best teams in the world. 

He tries. 

He has a whole routine for it. Music, food, movement. 

But he’s tired. This season has been shit. He’s not cocky, doesn’t like to consider himself as entitled, but he also knows his own worth. He knows what he’s capable of. He knows he’s not meeting any bars this season. 

He’s said to Michael, on more than one occasion, that if he didn’t have other things he was passionate about outside of racing, he’d be miserable. 

One of the only things keeping him going, making sure he doesn’t totally hate race weekends, is spending time with Max. 

It’s one of the first things you’re taught, as a young person, isn’t it? Don’t base your self-worth on a person. Don’t let one person fill you up and keep you afloat because the moment the dam is gone… 

Daniel isn’t doing that. He’s got Michael, his mates back home, he’s close with the other blokes in the paddock, he’s close enough to Nat to have gotten a godson out of it. 

Daniel isn’t putting all his eggs in one basket. He’s got more going on than just Max. But it’s nice to have someone in the paddock who actively understands what he’s going through. Max has had his fair share of shit races at Red Bull, and he’s been on the receiving end of plenty of Helmut’s disappointed phone calls. 

When Daniel has to retire the car, chances are Max will finish high up in the points, if not on the podium. And as his teammate, as his friend - it keeps Daniel from sinking into his self-pity. He can find it in himself to be happy for Max, to celebrate his wins even when they go hand in hand with Daniel’s failure. 

The point is, having Max around makes it easier for Daniel to keep positive. 

So for Max to be acting the way he is in Germany is frustrating. 

Or, it’s fine, really. Max is allowed to have his moments. God knows, Daniel has had his fair share of them this year. If someone had asked him, in January, if he thought Max Verstappen would be coaxing him out of a sulk and herding him around the media pen, he’d have laughed in their face. 

It’s just that Daniel would like Max to take that energy off track. Daniel doesn’t like feeling like the caretaker all the time. He doesn’t want to have to be the responsible one, the Oldest of the two of them all the time. He allows himself to be disappointed when they’re at the track and then as soon as they get back to their hotel, it’s like he has to flip a switch. 

He’s sure Max doesn’t _mean_ to make him feel like he has to put a lid on his feelings.

Max is entitled to be excited about a good race result. Just like he’s entitled to be upset about a P4 when he could have brought home a podium finish. It’s selfish, maybe, but sometimes Daniel just wants to put his head in Max’s lap, in the privacy of their hotel room, and have his hair stroked. 

It’s clear that that’s not going to happen after Hockenheim. Max is in a bizarre mood. He’d ignored Daniel at first, and that had been fine. They don’t have to be all over each other all the time. Daniel had been perfectly happy to order a quick meal from room service and head to bed. They didn’t even have to talk. 

When Max had started kissing him, it had been nice for about two seconds until Max got bitey and pushy in a way Daniel hadn’t seen him before. He’d seemed… almost resentful? And then he’d gone on about how Daniel could pretend Max was someone else so he could be mad at him. 

Because he knows Max, knows the way that ridiculous brain works, he’d touched his shoulder on the way out, told him he’d see him in the morning. Who knows how long Max would have ignored him for if he hadn’t. 

He calls his mum when he makes it back to his room. Just for someone who he knows will commiserate with him. Michael would tell him to pull himself together and focus on the race in front of him. 

Max obviously isn’t an option. 

Mum will let him have a strop and cry down the phone for a bit, and then she’ll tell him to make himself a hot drink, take another shower, and go to bed. 

He wakes up in the morning, and it’s still hard to look at the sun and think ‘thank you’ at it, but he doesn’t feel quite as dull as he had when he left Max’s room. 

\- 

It’s after their flight home to Nice that it all comes to a head. 

Max was a little reticent around Daniel when he’d knocked on his hotel door, a croissant and a pot of yoghurt already in a bag because Max would rather snooze his alarm seven times than eat breakfast. 

They’d taken the car to the airport together and Daniel swears he heard Max mutter ‘thought you were worried about how it looks’ under his breath. Which is fair. Daniel had kicked himself for saying that in Austria, the day of his birthday. 

But he’d had a lot on his mind and, truthfully, he wanted some time to himself to sulk in the car and really let himself sit in his disappointment without having to put on a brave face for anyone. For Max. 

The flight itself is much better. Max gets a drink in him and loosens up, slouches in his chair and natters on to Daniel about something he’d seen on YouTube earlier in the week. It’s nice. Calming. The lull Daniel needs after the shitstorm of the last few days. 

They take the same car home to Monaco. After only a few minutes, Max slides into the middle seat. He knocks their knees together. Daniel gives him a sleepy smile, and Max leans in to catch his smile under his own. 

They kiss until Max pulls back to rest his head on Daniel’s shoulder. It makes Daniel laugh, the fact that Max is a professional driver, but still gets motion sick if he isn’t facing exactly forward in a vehicle. 

Max is soft and warm against him. Daniel spends a few moments debating how hard Max would hit him if he put his arm around his waist, and then decides that he’s happy to take that chance. Max makes a happy little noise against Daniel’s neck and he must be more tired than Daniel had thought, to give himself away like that.

He wiggles a little next to Daniel, making himself comfortable. The hand closest to Daniel comes to rest over Daniel’s thigh, fingers slack and curled slightly into his palm. The camber of the road jostles them together, makes Max’s hand inch further up Daniel’s thigh. 

Max looks almost asleep where he’s curled up against Daniel. He’s certainly not alert enough to move his hand back to neutral territory. Daniel slips the hand not currently fisted in Max’s shirt above his waist into Max’s hand, anchors it halfway between his knee and his hip. He rubs gentle circles against his knuckles, enjoys the slight crinkle of hair under his thumb. 

Max’s hand twitches in his, like he might be about to pull away, and Daniel unconsciously tightens his grip. Max exhales against his neck and keeps his hand where it is. 

When they arrive at their apartment building, Max is more quiet than usual. But it has been a long flight. A long week. Daniel goes to say he’s gonna go unpack and he’ll meet Max back in his room for a late lunch, but Max interrupts him. 

“Actually, can you just come straight up with me?” There’s something in his voice, in the clench of his jaw, that tells Daniel his only choice is to say yes. He doesn’t know what storm he’ll unleash if he doesn’t. Max doesn’t ask for things, outright, not often. 

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Daniel follows him. They don’t speak in the elevator. Max takes his time unlocking his door. Daniel doesn’t hear Max sigh but the heavy rise and fall of his shoulders give him away. 

Max’s apartment is dark, the curtains still drawn from a whole week away. Lit only by the filtered sunlight through the gaps in the curtains and the steady red flash of the television light, Max turns to Daniel. He doesn’t say anything. His face is in shadow and Daniel can’t read him. 

He’s learned, over the years, when Max’s face is telling him something his voice won’t. It’s not a perfect science, but he’s narrowed it down to one or two interpretations for each of Max’s microexpressions. 

“What’s going on? Is everything okay?” Daniel has to ask. He knows Max hates it, hates feeling coddled or rushed, but he can’t just stand here in the dim light of Max’s hallway with his suitcase at his ankles and _not_ ask. 

“Hah,” Max says. He actually _says_ it. There’s no hint of laughter in his voice. 

The silence between them stretches out long enough that Daniel starts fidgeting. He retracts the handle of his suitcase, scoots it closer to the wall. 

He walks a little deeper into Max’s apartment, close enough to hear the angry little pants leaving Max. 

He figures a cup of tea for them both wouldn’t go astray. If Max doesn’t want to drink it at least the time it takes the jug to boil will give him time to collect himself. 

Max crosses his arms across his chest and steps into Daniel’s path. He’s not big enough to block Daniel from leaving the hallway if he wants to, but the implication is enough. Whatever Max has brought him here for, they’re doing it in the hallway. 

“I want to know what I’m doing wrong.” Max does this thing where he compensates for his lack of eloquence by delivering his sentences like battering rams. “There’s clearly something, so don’t do that thing where you’re nice and you say there isn’t.” 

Daniel would have to be paying a lot less attention that he is to miss the way Max’s crossed arms have turned into a sort of self-protective hug.

“Yesterday, you were pissed off at me, so why didn’t you just yell at me?” Max is the one yelling, at the moment. “Would have been a whole lot easier than keeping me at a distance like this!” 

“I--” Daniel moves forward, and Max dances back away from him. 

“It’s not even just yesterday, is it. You’ve been doing it for months. I thought at first, that it was me. But I am not _blind_ , Daniel. I see how you look at me like you… like-- I see how you look at me.” He pauses and Daniel knows better, by now, than to interrupt him. 

Max is flushed red, with embarrassment and with frustration, and Daniel is glad for the years he’s had to learn the man in front of him. He knows that vulnerable Max comes across as angry. He’s prepared to let himself be yelled at if it helps Max work through whatever this is. 

“So is it the team?” Max continues. “Are you worried what they’ll say? Because fuck them, honestly.” He leaves a long pause, sticks his chin out at Daniel, and oh. It’s his turn now.

Daniel shakes his head. No. Of course he isn’t worried about the team. 

Max’s eyes flare. “So then it _is_ me! Is it that I don’t do enough for you? To… to turn you on? Is that it? Because I _tried_ that. With the daddy shirt and the coming onto you in public.” He starts pacing, secure in the knowledge that Daniel isn’t going anywhere at this point. “I tried to touch you in the car today and you just _held my hand_!

“I don’t- Maybe you’re into lingerie or something? Because fuck you if you think I’m gonna do that. No way.” Max is practically trembling now. “But then I think maybe I just should. You clearly don’t think I’m hot enough to do it like I am. So what is it? _What do you want me to do!_ Because I literally can’t think of anything else. I can’t.” 

Max’s voice cracks and Daniel wants to hold him but he knows he’d only get a fist to the chest if he reached for him, right now. 

“You like talking. You like… You’re good at communicating with people. You tell me. Because if we can’t fix whatever’s gone wrong, then we can’t do this anymore. Just tell me why you don’t want to fuck me, and leave!” 

Daniel knows he’s taking too long to answer. Max has dropped his arms to his sides and has taken fistfuls of the hem of his shirt. His eyes dart between Daniel and the wall and then back to Daniel. Daniel _knows_ he has to answer or Max really will kick him out, but his brain has stalled. What is he even supposed to say?

Max is getting increasingly agitated, though, he’s started eyeing Daniel’s suitcase like he’s wondering how quickly he could throw it through the door. Better to say something ridiculous and unpracticed than it is to say nothing at all. 

“Hey, Max, no.” He sees Max’s brain hit the ‘no’ and start catastrophising. He rushes on before Max can assume Daniel is saying a blanket no to him. “It’s not that you’re not sexy. I’d fucking love to fuck you.”

And, okay. That’s one of the worst sentences that has ever left Daniel’s mouth. If Max wasn’t already angry at him, that would do it. _I’d fucking love to fuck you_. Smooth, you idiot. 

Call it a wire that’s been jiggled loose in Max’s head over the years of high speed crashes, or call it the fact that he’s a twenty year old with more sex drive than sensibility, but Max lights up. 

“So do it, then!”

It should feel awkward, mechanical, to walk toward Max and lean in for a kiss. There’s nothing natural or organic about the way he wraps his arms around Max’s waist, rests his hands over the strong breadth of his hips. But Max makes a greedy noise into Daniel’s mouth. 

“My bed is just…”

“Max, I know where your bedroom is.” 

Max gets a handful of Daniel’s hair and pulls. “Well, after the past months I wasn’t sure.” 

Daniel retaliates by pushing Max onto the bed a little harder than he would have if he’d been in full possession of his brain. “How’s that for you? Decisive enough?”

Max wriggles up the mattress. “I’m still not convinced you…”

Daniel straddles Max’s hips on the bed. He cuts Max off with a kiss. They stay there, for a long heady moment. Max worms his hands under Daniel’s shirt and splays his palms across his shoulders. Daniel’s hips press down into Max’s and for once he doesn’t make himself pull back.

He kisses down Max’s neck, hums into the middle of Max’s clothed chest, and slips his fingers under the waistband of Max’s shorts. “Good?” 

“Fuck.” Max breathes. “Yeah.”

Max’s dick is smooth and warm in Daniel’s palm. He’s narrower than Daniel expected, looking at the rest of him, but it’s nice. Makes something warm and protective curl in his chest. 

Max pats at Daniel’s shoulder until he returns to his mouth. 

“Can I?” He asks, soft and almost shy against Daniel’s chin. 

Daniel guides Max’s hand down between them in answer. He feels Max twitch against him when he wraps his hand around Daniel. 

Max gets progressively wetter, and increasingly mobile. For a man who Daniel has seen maintain one position for an entire three hour team meeting, he seems to be incapable of holding still here. Not that Daniel is complaining. 

It’s not long before Max is screwing his face up, tensing under Daniel, and coming. He spills wet and warm over Daniel’s hand and he goes immediately still, flushed and breathless against the bed. Daniel pulls his hand out of his pants, wipes it against the sheets, and rolls off Max. He cuddles into his side, kisses the curve of his bicep. 

“Wow.” It’s all he’s capable of saying. 

Max turns his face into the gap between Daniel’s face and his pillow. He groans, long and frustrated. Daniel immediately props himself up on an elbow. 

“Max?” 

“I can’t believe I came so quick.” His voice is muffled by the bedding and the fact Daniel knows he’s saying it through clenched teeth. He’s embarrassed. 

Daniel knows how to deal with this. He’d been so worried it was instant regret. 

“Hey,” he murmurs. “No, shut up and look at me.” He waits for Max to twitch his face out of the mattress. “I came, too. That was so hot. _You_ were so hot.” 

Max eyes him, a suspicious wild animal, for a few seconds while he decides whether Daniel is lying to him or not. He clearly decides that Daniel can be trusted because he uncurls himself and starts pulling at Daniel’s shirt. 

“Get out of this. We’re both disgusting and I can’t be bothered with a shower right now.” He wastes very little time getting them both naked, and Daniel tugs the bedding up to cover them against the cool breeze of the air conditioning. 

There’s a long, comfortable silence. And then, “What was stopping you?” 

Daniel presses his mouth to the warm skin over Max’s collarbones. 

In truth, it was his own head stopping him. The knowledge that he’ll be leaving the team, more likely than not. He’s seen Max in his past relationships. When things started getting difficult, Max would call it off. Which Daniel understands - it’s one of the reasons he himself hasn’t looked for a relationship outside of Formula 1. It’s hard to maintain a relationship when he’s living out of a suitcase. 

So he hadn’t wanted to get in too deep with Max if it was all going to fall apart when Daniel was no longer at Red Bull. 

And then there was the worry that Max was still young, that he was just kissing Daniel because he was close and available.

Instead of any of that, “I don’t know. Just call it stupidity, I guess.” 

Max’s chest shakes under his head as he laughs. “Yeah, you are pretty stupid.” 

Daniel flicks his nipple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eagle-eyed readers (and English majors) may see that chapter 5 & 6 are the only ones without stars in the titles... It was definitely on purpose, but you can decide the significance for yourselves


	7. 2018 - I can tell from the stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we did it!!! we made it to the end of the Red Bull era! 
> 
> title from [here](https://genius.com/The-mowglis-i-feel-good-about-this-lyrics)

Daniel is much more tactile, after that. 

He wraps his arms around Max from behind during one of the first team meetings at Budapest, he grabs his ass through his fireproofs before free practice, and he leans into Max’s space to take a drink from his bottle while Max is holding it.

Max soaks up every second of his attention. The fact that Daniel is happy to do this in public, around their colleagues and their bosses, it’s… Well. He knows Daniel had assured him he doesn’t give a shit what the team thinks, but it’s nice to have the proof. 

Max would kiss Daniel in the middle of the garage if he thought Daniel would let him. He doesn’t need Daniel to waltz Max in a circle around the catering room, and lower him into his seat with a dip so exaggerated he nearly drops Max on his ass, but it’s still nice. 

The rest of his insecurity disappears when Daniel corners him behind the Red Bull trailers, in the shadow and around a blind corner where the cameras can’t see them. 

“Had a dream about you last night.” Daniel ties the sleeves of his race overalls around Max’s waist. His hands brush over his ass. “Missed you in the morning.” 

The night before was one of the rare occasions that they hadn’t shared a hotel room. Max is about to reply, is trying to formulate a snappy joke about what sort of dreams Daniel was having, when Daniel’s hands migrate from the curve of his lower back to cradle the wings of his shoulders. His chin nudges Max’s and that’s all the warning he gets before Daniel is kissing him. 

It’s a proper kiss. Not just a chaste _hello, I missed you_ kiss. Daniel licks over the line of Max’s bottom teeth, curves his tongue along the ridge of his hard palate. He moans into Max’s mouth and knocks their hips together. He’s warm, like always, and he smells like petrol and oil and sweat. 

The shadows move around them as a mechanic walks in front of the trailers with a stack of tyres but instead of startling apart, Daniel’s laughter brushes Max’s cheeks as he pulls back just enough to rest their foreheads together. “Never a moment of silence around here.”

“That’s why we have locks on the hotel doors.” 

Daniel passes Max’s suggestive smirk right back at him. “You make a good point. I’ll leave my room key in your driver’s room?” 

\- 

Their luck changes in Budapest. Daniel brings home a respectable fourth place finish, and Max is the one with the engine failure, this time. 

It’s probably a little unhealthy, but Max isn’t even that disappointed about his finish. Not when it gets him a Daniel who isn’t exactly beaming but isn’t floating in the middle of a spiral of despair. 

He sneaks out of their hotel room while Daniel is in the shower. As much as he wants to stay and try his luck, see if Daniel will let him into the bathroom with him, he has a plan to execute. 

Max’s phone buzzes against his thigh when he’s halfway back to the room. 

> **all ok? [delivered 20:33]**

Max sends a thumbs up emoji back. 

He almost feels bad about making Daniel worry, but then he’s unlocking their door and coming face to face with Daniel - flushed from his shower, wrapped in a fluffy white bathrobe, sitting in the middle of the bed. 

“It’s not exactly winner’s champagne, but…”Max brings a bottle of prosecco out from behind his back. 

He’d had to ask the woman at reception for it, explain it was a surprise otherwise he’d have ordered room service. She’d been more than happy to oblige, handing Max the bottle and then the Sharpie he’d requested, with a knowing smile. 

He’d scribbled a massive ‘4’ over the label of the bottle, messy and ugly but serving its purpose wonderfully. 

Daniel’s face does a wonderful twitching dance as he takes it all in. 

“You got me fourth place champagne?” He stands up from the bed and the robe falls apart around his thighs. Max is disappointed to see he’s wearing underwear. Still, it’s not too much of a let down. Daniel’s thighs are a sight Max doesn’t think he’s ever going to tire of. 

“I figured if we don’t celebrate now, we’re gonna be waiting a bloody long time for anything else!” Max grins, ducking out of the way when Daniel throws a pillow at him. 

“You are _such_ an asshole!” 

They work their way through the bottle together, sharing sips on the bed, hands brushing over the neck of the bottle at every pass. It feels wonderfully reminiscent of the night in China, their first kiss. 

Eventually, Max ends up flat on his back, grinding up against Daniel through their briefs. They both have flights in the morning - Daniel’s more long-haul than Max’s - and both of them are too race and wine-tired to do anything more than lazy frotting. 

They come, Max then Daniel, and Max pushes at Daniel until he drags himself out of bed to get a damp face cloth for the two of them. 

He strips naked while Daniel is in the bathroom and lets Daniel throw an arm over his chest when he pulls the covers over them. Max finds a proper cuddle stifling and even this, the warmth of Daniel’s body pressed all along him is almost too much. But it’s early days. 

They can have that conversation later. 

\- 

Max sees Daniel off at the airport. 

“Promise not to flirt with any women this time?” Max asks, only half joking. 

“What? Sheila?” Daniel tugs Max’s cap off his head, puts it on himself backwards. A little poof of hair sticks out the gap in the front. Max wants to wind it around his fingers.

“You even remember her name?” 

“Well, she was pretty memorable, to be fair to me. Up-chucked all over me, remember?”

“I thought you said you caught it in a sick bag.” 

“We-ell…” Daniel seesaws his hand. “Comme ci, comme ça.” 

Max groans at him and pushes him towards the security gate. “Go away, you idiot. Have fun in LA!” 

He lets Daniel take the stolen cap with him. It’s only fair he gets to take a piece of Max with him, when Max has memories of Daniel scattered all around Monaco. 

\- 

> **Crisis averted. You can stop clutching your pearls now. [delivered 07:10]**
> 
> **Absolutely no sheilas were flirted with in the makingn of this movie [delivered 07:10]**
> 
> **Can’t say the same for the air quality though. Took my shoes off [delivered 07:10]**
> 
> **Did you know you can watch inflight movies in 1.5x speed? [delivered 07:10]**
> 
> **cos FUCK me some of these movies are shit [delivered 07:10]**
> 
> **Realised these will all send at the same time again. If i wake you up just kick my voodoo doll or something [delivered 07:10]**

Max texts Daniel back a picture of a cabbage he’d found in his fridge, with a knife sticking out of it. 

> _its you_ _🖕 [sent 07:52]_

Their communication isn’t all insults. 

Max’s camera roll slowly fills up with photos of Daniel sweaty and exhausted from a workout with Michael. In return, Max props his camera up on his balcony and ignores how ridiculous he feels taking photos of himself on an exercise bike. 

Daniel clearly likes them if his inarticulate texts back are anything to go by. 

The break is a _whole month_. A whole month of not seeing each other, talking only on FaceTime across weird timezones. It’s only expected that workout photos quickly evolve to dick pics.

Max hasn’t spent this much time thinking about his dick since he was a teenager. 

His wrist gets tense from holding his phone at an artsy angle, trying to get the best light out of his bedroom. He has a folder on his phone for exactly this - stuff he’d taken for girls in the past and saved for future conversations. It saves time. 

Looking back at them, though, none of them are Daniel quality. 

He spends a while in the bathroom, fussing with his razor and a pair of nail scissors. He realises, when he gets back to his phone, that instead of improving the spectacle, he’s just made his pubic hair look crispy and weird. 

He considers having a breakdown, giving up on the whole endeavor and throwing his phone into the harbour. But his phone buzzes with a picture of Daniel’s bare hip against white sheets, the improbably small gap of blank skin between the jut of his hipbone and where his tattoo begins. 

It’s not like Daniel hasn’t seen him naked before. 

Max takes the photo. 

Daniel’s response is almost instantaneous. And gratifying. 

Max stops worrying so much. 

\- 

> **i’m coming back to monaco a week early. If youre home i’ll swing by when i arrive [delivered 13:17]**

Daniel picks up almost as soon as Max dials his number. 

“Obviously I’m picking you up from the airport.” 

They start talking about the weather in LA, the way Max’s neighbours are still wracking up noise complaints from the rest of the building. Daniel sends Max his flight details and Max sets an alarm, as if he would forget. 

\- 

Max has had almost a whole month to prepare for this reunion. 

He’d thought he was prepared, but most of his condoms were expired and he was nearly out of lube, and then somewhere between walking to the grocery store and paying the cashier, he’d realised he didn’t really know what proper sex with a man involved. 

He’s not an idiot. He _knows_ what’s involved. But he’s a bit fuzzy on the details. 

It had been an enlightening (and very nerve-wracking) fews hours on Google. But it had the desired result. Max now has a folder on his laptop labelled 🍆🍯 that he hopes Daniel will never, ever find. 

He’d rather Daniel think Max was just a natural born talent at anal sex. 

He’d been worried his nerves would show when he met Daniel at the arrivals gate in Nice, but as soon as he’d seen Daniel, all thoughts of ‘adequate preparation’ and ‘careful personal hygiene’ leave his mind. 

He’s seen Daniel (a lot of Daniel) while he was away, but getting to hold him, to stick his nose in his neck and inhale his vanilla spice aftershave are things even high definition iPhone photos can’t replicate. 

Max had driven to the airport, so they can’t canoodle in the back of the car this time. But Max does hold Daniel’s hand in the centre console most of the way, letting him control the music and only threatening to send them off the road if Daniel doesn’t change the song a couple of times. 

Back at Max’s apartment, the atmosphere changes. Max backs Daniel up against the wall as soon as they get the door closed and sticks his hand straight down his jeans. 

Daniel’s breath escapes him in a heavy whoosh, but he doesn’t complain. Max curls his hand around Daniel’s dick and _oh, hello_. He’s already hard, already a little wet at the tip. Max rubs his nose along Daniel’s. 

“Were you like this in the car?” 

Daniel nods, pressing his hips into Max’s hand. 

“So desperate,” Max breathes. 

“Yeah,” Daniel says. He slides his hands down to palm at Max’s ass. “Please.” 

His grip is warm and unyielding. Max’s dick perks up in response to his touch, and he presses back into Daniel’s hand even as he tightens his grip around Daniel’s dick and gives it a firm stroke. 

He’s done his research, and this is what he’s wanted for literally months (probably more like years, if he’s being accurate) but his stomach is still tangled around a thick ball of anxious nausea. He knows Daniel will be gentle. 

But he’s new to this. 

Max has always been the one to, well, to stick it in. 

He’s never been with a man. He doesn’t know how you’re supposed to go about figuring these things out, but he assumes it’s what Daniel wants, judging from their past encounters - Max in his lap, Max sprawled under him on the bed, Max cuddled under his arm. 

He’s ready. 

He’s happy to do it. 

He walks them toward his bedroom. Daniel doesn’t want to let go of him, though, and Max gets that. Daniel is warm and firm and solid under his palms and against his chest. Despite the long-haul flight, he smells so fucking good. He’s picked up even more of a tan in LA, somehow. 

“Daniel, fuck.” Max knees up onto the mattress, pulling Daniel with him. “I’ve got the, uh, stuff in the bedside table.” He sits back on his heels and waits. Daniel makes a happy little sound when he finds the lube and condoms. 

“You got a head start without me?” He’s holding up the lube, already open and slightly sticky from where Max experimented with a few fingers. 

“Yeah, well.” He shrugs. “Practice makes perfect?” It’s not meant to sound like a question. 

Daniel grins. He’s already ditched his jeans somewhere along the way, and he’s currently pulling his shirt over his head. “You gonna join me, or you just wanna watch?” 

Max jolts into gear. He’d definitely gotten distracted by the lean strength in Daniel’s thighs and the smooth stretch of his stomach. The man is practically hairless. He’s known this for years. He doesn’t know if Daniel shaves, but when he presses a sweaty palm to his chest it’s not prickly. 

The thought of Daniel waxing himself goes straight to Max’s dick, already painfully hard against his thigh. 

He follows Daniel’s lead and gets naked, only barely suppressing the urge to cup his hand around his dick, as if Daniel would make fun of the size. As if Daniel hasn’t already seen it. 

“Hey,” Daniel breathes, and Max realises he’s been stuck staring at Daniel’s chest without speaking for god knows how long. “You okay? We don’t have to, you know.” 

Max shakes his head, vehemently. “Yes we do!” He catches himself. “I- I mean, yes I want to. Obviously if you don’t want to we don’t have to…”

Daniel catches him in a kiss before he can ramble on any longer. “All good. I got you. It’s been a while, huh?” 

And isn’t that the understatement of the century. He could just be talking about the three weeks they’ve spent apart, but Max is pretty sure he’s thinking of all the time before this - the way they’ve been building to this almost since the beginning. 

They kiss some more, until Max has forgotten most of his anxiety and is filled instead with the type of horny excitement that’s almost familiar but not quite. Nothing has felt quite like this before. 

He’s confused when Daniel pulls back, rearranges them on the bed so Daniel is lying back against the pillows and Max is between his legs. Everything he’d read suggested it’s better on your back for the first time, but he guesses Daniel wants him to ride it? 

He reaches for the lube that Daniel had discarded next to his hip and thrills when Daniel makes a pleased, eager sound. Max coats his fingers liberally, watches Daniel’s eyes track his every movement, and then reaches behind himself. 

“Oh,” Daniel says and it doesn’t sound exactly the way Max had imagined. He’d figured there’d be excitement, attraction. Instead, he seems almost disappointed. Or, not disappointed, the light in Daniel’s eyes is too bright for that. Maybe confused. “You want to bottom?” 

It is _not_ the question Max had been expecting. 

He pauses, his fingers smearing lube over his ass cheeks. “Yes?”

Daniel sits up on one elbow. “‘Yes’? You don’t sound sure.” 

Max rolls his eyes. “Of course I’m sure about you!”

“Of course you’re sure about _me_!” Daniel echoes. “Look at me!” He does a ridiculous shimmy against the sheets. It looks more like a cat trying to get out an itch than anything remotely sensual. “But maybe you want to do me?” 

Max’s brain stalls. 

His first thought is to smack Daniel, to ask him what he thinks they’re doing now if not ‘doing each other’. But then the implication sinks in. The way Daniel is laid out on his back, legs splayed around Max, one hand curled lazily around the base of his dick like he could stay there all day. 

“Oh.” Max says, bringing his hands down to curve around Daniel’s knees. They’re almost comically knobbly - the dark hair an interesting opposition to how delicate his bones seem. 

Daniel laughs, rough and breathless. “Yeah, oh.” He sits up to scratch his fingers through the fine hairs around Max’s ears. “What do you think?”

Max answers by wrapping the hand that isn’t sticky with lube around the back of Daniel’s neck and pressing him down into the mattress. 

-

Sex with Daniel is giggly. 

Even when it’s awkward (and it _is_ awkward, because they’re getting used to being allowed to touch each other, and Max isn’t used to reacting to a flat chest) it’s fun. 

Max’s thigh cramps up when he’s holding himself over Daniel one night, and the bellow he lets out startles Daniel enough he sends his heel right into Max’s tailbone. 

Daniel yawns around Max’s dick, the morning before they fly to Spa. 

They _both_ overestimate how easy it is for two grown men to have sex in the shower of a motorhome. 

Max comes third in Spa and Daniel resumes his run of DNFs. 

“Home race!” Daniel grins at Max, catching him around the waist and lifting him off his feet. They’re in the middle of the Red Bull garage, surrounded by engineers and pit crew, but no one gives either of them a second glance. “How are you going to celebrate?”

“I have a few ideas.”

Daniel presses his smile right against Max’s neck even though he’s sweaty and disgusting from the race. 

The Red Bull motorhomes don’t give them much privacy, so they have to save most of the celebrations for when they arrive back in Monaco. Daniel drags Max up to his apartment, where at least Daniel has a fully stocked kitchen and they won’t have to leave for a few days. 

Afterwards, Max stays still long enough for Daniel to rest his head on his chest, over his racing heart. Max bats him away after a moment. His breath keeps catching against the hairs on his chest. 

“Ticklish.” 

Daniel blows his breath out extra hard, like a horse, before rolling off him. 

“Hey,” he says, slow and soft. “Do you have a minute?”

Max looks around them, naked on top of the bed, the sheet bunched around their feet, the condom on the floor next to the bedside table. “What else would I be doing?”

Daniel sits up against the headboard, pulls a pillow into his lap. “I need to talk to you about something.”

Max follows him, crossing his legs and mirroring the pillow trick. “Ooh,” he jokes. “Is this one of _those_ conversations? Do you have a disease or something? Should I be worried?” 

Daniel huffs out a laugh, fondly exasperated. “Yeah, I’m real sick in the head to want to have sex with you. Don’t worry, it’s not contagious. You’re clearly making excellent decisions, ‘cause you’re sleeping with me.”

They break into a bit of a tussle, which Max would definitely have won if Daniel hadn’t pulled back and cleared his throat. Max takes the hint and settles back down. He gives Daniel his best, serious ‘I’m listening’ face. 

“So,” Daniel starts. “You know how there’s speculation about what I’m doing next year?”

Max nods, slowly. How could he not know? The media keep asking him about it, like he’s Daniel’s keeper. 

“Jeepers,” Daniel sighs. “There’s no easy way to say this, is there. Okay, well, I’ve told Christian I’m moving to Renault.” 

Max knows he’s supposed to speak, supposed to say _something_ , but what is he supposed to say? 

The done thing would be to congratulate him, but what’s there to congratulate him for? 

All he can think is how much of a class A idiot Daniel is being. It’s a stupid decision. A _stupid_ decision. Is it made out of desperation? Out of spite? That thought takes hold and doesn’t let go. 

Max opens his mouth. “I fucking knew you’d hate me.” He doesn’t know why he’d found it so hard to think of something to say. Now that he’s started, he can’t stop. “I start doing better than you, and you go and run away? When did you decide? After we fucked?”

He’s white knuckling the pillow in his lap. He wouldn’t be surprised if he ripped a hole in the pillow case. 

“No! It was a long decision, okay? I had… well, there were a few offers.” 

“So what that it was hard? You didn’t even have to make the decision.” 

Daniel’s face condenses into a more serious version of his listening face. It’s the one he puts on when Christian isn’t listening to him in debriefs. “Max, you know I did.” 

“For what?” Max explodes. “You have one bad season and you chuck your toys in? And they call me the immature one.” 

“I-” Daniel pulls his top lip into his mouth, closes his eyes, like he has to get away from Max already. “It’s not ‘cause of one bad season. I mean, sure, it was a part of it, but it wasn’t- There were a lot of reasons.” 

He doesn’t want to ask, but… “Was one of the reasons me?” 

Daniel’s silence is enough of an answer. 

“Fuck you!” he spits. 

He is thankful, all of a sudden, that they’d come to Daniel’s apartment. 

It’s always been easier to leave than it is to kick someone out. He doesn’t know where his underwear is, so he gets into his jeans without them. The walk to his apartment isn’t long enough that he’ll chafe. He grabs one of Daniel’s team branded windbreakers to cover the bruises on his chest. 

He ignores Daniel’s protests, and slams the door behind himself. If Daniel wanted him to stay, he should have thought about that before he left Max. 

It comes just after midnight, the text. Max ignores it for as long as he can, staring at the little notification on his lockscreen, the name _Dickhead_ 💙 against the background of the Monaco skyline - a photo Max had taken on one of their hikes. 

Eventually, though, curiosity outweighs stubbornness. 

> **At least let me explain why [delivered 00:17]**

He doesn’t reply, but Daniel starts typing almost as soon as Max opens his message. He’s been staring at his phone, then. Waiting. 

Max has a shower while he waits, partly to stop himself waiting by his phone like a freak, partly to stop himself deleting Daniel’s number entirely. 

When he returns, Daniel’s explanation is waiting for him. 

Max reads it three times over. 

He puts his phone down on his nightstand. 

He reads it again when he wakes up. 

He doesn’t agree, can’t say seeing the reasons laid out in text messages makes him feel any better, but he at least understands. A little bit. 

He texts Daniel while he cooks himself breakfast. 

> _I’m making eggs if you want some [sent 09:43]_

Daniel shows up at his door, dressed in sweatpants and Max’s Red Bull jersey. He looks unreasonably small in it. 

They don’t talk over breakfast, aside from Max warning Daniel not to complain about the burned toast. 

When their plates are clean, Daniel reaches across the table to cover Max’s hand with his own. 

“The universe is so big, right? Like, it’s infinite.” Daniel pauses, long and meaningful, and Max has no idea where this is going. He nods, anyway. “So, then, just think… There’s a universe out there where I didn’t leave. Just like there’s a universe out there where we _both_ race for Renault.” 

It’s clumsy and it’s see-through, but Max appreciates Daniel for trying. He flips his hand so he’s holding Daniel in return. 

“Fuck you. I’m never racing for Renault… Not unless it’s a universe where they actually win races.” 

It’s one of the reasons he still can’t fathom Daniel’s decision. At least if it was Ferrari, there’d be a sense of grandiosity about it. 

Daniel’s thumb performs a figure eight on the back of Max’s hand. “ _There_ you are,” he grins, soft and gentle. 

Max doesn’t want to soften in front of him, he wants to be angry and pissed off and bitter, but it’s a lot easier to lean into Daniel’s space and kiss the butter off his lips. 

\- 

Max isn’t the jealous type. He isn’t. 

He expects his partners to let him talk to whoever he wants, and he lets them do the same in return. 

It’s just that… Well, Daniel keeps flirting with basically everyone he meets. 

It’s not that it’s a new thing, it’s just that Max is particularly sensitive to it now. And it’s not _everyone_. But it’s a lot of them. Women in the paddock, women in the clubs they go to, men in press conferences, _men_ in the clubs they go to, and, the worst one of all, fucking Nico. 

_They’re going to be on a team,_ Max’s brain taunts. _He’s going to be the new you_. 

And that’s it, isn’t it? If Daniel could leave him at Red Bull, then it stands to reason that he could leave him in general. 

For the most part, Max is able to push down the dark insecurity. Logically, he knows he is being ridiculous. 

Daniel goes to a fitting with Renault for his new uniform (and that’s a bloody weird thought - Daniel is something other than navy blue and red) and brings back a Renault branded cap. He sneaks up behind Max on the sofa and sits it on his head. 

“Do you know the positive thing about me moving? It’s gonna be super obvious when you’re wearing my clothes.” 

Max shakes the hat off (Daniel never puts them on firmly, too concerned with flattening Max’s hair, he says) and promises it will never happen. 

He’s telling the truth, if you ignore the fact that barely half an hour later, he’s naked in Daniel’s lap, wearing the Renault cap, and breathing hard against his jaw.

-

Daniel asks him, one night, when they’re both sweaty and sticky post-orgasm, why he always says his whole name during sex. “You’re always so formal.” 

Max finds it hilarious. He’s had Daniel’s dick down his throat and he thinks he’s being formal. 

“Your name is Daniel,” he explains, anyway. “You always call me by my full name, so it’s not fair otherwise.”

Daniel still doesn’t get it. 

Max tugs at Daniel’s arm until it’s draped across his eyes. He needs to be blind for this level of vulnerability. 

“If you call me Max and I call you Daniel, then that’s great. It’s not fair if you call me Max and I just call you Dan. You deserve your whole name, from me.” 

He doesn’t think Daniel understands, but that’s okay. He starts making up longer names for Max and then looking at him like ‘hey, look what I did. Look how much I like you.’ 

\- 

It happens in Austin. 

After they film their PR video in _Allen’s Boots_ \- trying on ridiculous shirts and trousers, and cowboy boots that cost more than Max thinks something that ugly has any right to cost - Daniel keeps the stetson hat they’d given him. 

To start with, Max likes it. Has an elaborate fantasy situation involving the hat, Daniel, and their bed that he’s hoping to make a reality. 

But then random women on the street keep stopping them to coo over how handsome Daniel looks in it. 

That by itself would be fine. Daniel _is_ handsome, and he’s got Max on his arm. It’s like a compliment by proxy. They keep touching him, though. High on his arm, nails curled around his bicep like… like _harpies_. 

Even that, Max supposes he’d be able to deal with. It’s the fact that Daniel is too polite, too nice, to brush them off. He responds, a little. Max knows him well enough to know it’s not genuine, but the women don’t. 

One of them asks if Daniel has a girlfriend and he laughs. “Not, uh- not exactly.” 

It curdles Max’s stomach. _Not exactly_. 

Maybe it means _‘I have a boyfriend instead’_ or maybe it means _‘it’s not exactly that sort of relationship.’_

He realises, suddenly, in the middle of the street, watching Daniel finally turn down her invitation to grab a drink, that they haven’t discussed whether they are exclusive. 

When this whole thing with Daniel had started, Max had told himself it was just a bit of fun between teammates. He knows, now, that he’d been kidding himself. That whatever he has with Daniel is something he doesn’t want to end. 

As much as he really, really would rather never have that conversation with Daniel, he knows he has to. They’ve had enough miscommunications and bungled conversations. They don’t need another one. 

Max doesn’t get a chance to talk to Daniel until after the race. 

He comes second, ecstatic and glad for the champagne to ease the conversation he’s going to have to start with Daniel. 

Daniel, for his part, retires after eight laps and puts his fist through the door of his driver’s room. 

Max, used to accepting his more soppy moments and allowing himself to express them, kisses Daniel’s bruised knuckles in their hotel room. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

“What for? I’m the idiot who punched a door.”

Max shrugs. “Still. You’re sore. I’m sorry.” 

While Daniel’s face is still stuck in something fond and grateful, Max grabs his other hand. 

“What are we?” He asks, abrupt and refusing to let himself backtrack. “Because I really like you, and I can’t keep doing this if it isn’t serious for you.” He feels sick to his stomach, and he’s grateful that he’s sitting on the couch next to Daniel because he can’t feel his legs. 

Daniel stares at him, blank faced and slack jawed for a long, long moment. Max was nervous for this conversation, but mainly because he isn’t comfortable with emotional transparency. 

He hadn’t imagined that Daniel would find it a difficult question to answer. 

“Uh-” Daniel tightens his fingers around Max’s hand when he goes to pull away. “I said I love you last night?” 

Max’s heart stutters. “I was sucking your dick, that doesn’t count!” 

Daniel rolls his eyes at him. “Okay, well what about that time I brought you as my plus one to Christian’s barbeque?” 

“We were both invited!”

“Max, when is the last time you kissed someone who wasn’t me?” 

This conversation is not unfolding like Max had expected. The last time he’d kissed someone who wasn’t Daniel was Lea, that time after Daniel won in Monaco. It’s months ago. It’s embarrassing to admit. 

“For me,” Daniel starts, so softly that Max braces himself for him to say it was two weeks ago. “For me, it was Bahrain. After the two DNFs.” 

Max’s brain stalls. Just completely stops. 

Bahrain was before he’d kissed Daniel in China. 

It’s October and Daniel hasn’t kissed anyone else since April. 

Max has been busy worrying that Daniel is looking at other people, that they’re still using condoms not just because Max hates the mess but because Daniel wants to keep his options open. 

He’s never been more happy to be wrong. 

“S-so,” he stutters, “when I was sucking your dick, you- you really…”

He can’t even say it. 

Daniel grins, pulls Max into his lap. “I love you, you dope.” 

Max doesn’t know what to say. His throat closes up around the correct response. He could say literally anything, but instead he bumps their noses together and loops his arms around Daniel’s neck. 

“Is your hand too sore for second-place sex?” 

Daniel kisses him, long and deep. “I’m offended you think my sex is just second place.” 

\- 

“I hope you know, I- The dick thing. I, that too. To you.” 

Daniel laughs at him, pulls him into a headlock and messes his hair up. “I love you, too. Asshole.” 

Max sticks his tongue in Daniel’s belly button - disgusting, perhaps, but effective. Daniel releases him and Max kisses him, soft and tender and, yeah, okay, loving. 

“Dickhead.” 

When Daniel texts him the next day, just a request for Max to pick up some meat from the butcher’s for their dinner, his phone buzzes against his thigh. 

_Daniel_ _🍯☀️_

\- 

It’s hard to stand on the podium in Abu Dhabi and not have Daniel up there with him. It was their last chance to do it while they still matched, while Daniel was still the same Daniel he’d met in 2016. 

He knows Daniel has changed, since then. Max has, too. And he knows Daniel isn’t going to become a different person when he goes to Renault. 

But when they’re both in their Red Bull gear, Max can pull Daniel into his chest and know their names are pressed to each other’s hips through their race suits. 

Daniel lifts him off his feet in the garage, beaming and overflowing with a nervous energy. 

“Last day of school jitters,” he’d said to Max in their hotel room that morning. 

His last race at Red Bull is bittersweet. 

He’d finished fourth - so close to the podium but far enough away from the bottom of the pack that he at least gets to finish on something of a high. Max will share his champagne with him, will play the Australian anthem while he gets Daniel off if that’s what he needs from his last day. 

He doesn’t think it will be, but he’s prepared just in case. 

“Congrats on the third, mate!” Daniel’s hands on his elbows look platonic to anyone watching them, but the touch sends shockwaves through Max. “The end of an era, huh? What’s next, do you think? Fight you for the championship next year?”

Max agrees, but reminds Daniel that he’s going into a car that’s a bit of a shitbox so obviously it will be Max winning the title. 

It’s their last race together, except it’s not, really. 

It’s not even their last day together working for Red Bull. 

They still have the _On the Sofa_ to film, and two weeks of work after that, and then Daniel is flying out to Australia for the holiday, and then they’ll be back on the track in Barcelona for testing. 

It’s not a big deal. 

Max still pulls Daniel into a hug so he can press his face into his shoulder and dry his eyes there. 

-

### 2019 - Belting out sunlight

It’s not as bad as Max had expected, seeing Daniel at Renault. 

He misses having him in the garage with him, and in all the team briefings, but he gets along well with Pierre and he sees Daniel around the paddock anyway. 

Daniel glows in yellow. He’s happy. The tension in him, this season, is excitement rather than frustration. 

Max introduces Daniel to his mum, formally this time, when in the past he’d just arrived with Daniel in tow and left the two of them to talk between themselves. He doesn’t say anything, not explicitly. 

It’s hard enough having those sorts of conversations with Daniel, let alone his mother. 

But she knows. He knows she knows. The gentle relief in her eyes when she looks at the two of them sat across the dinner table from each other, drinking wine and arguing over the best shape of pasta is enough verification. 

Daniel is much more blunt, of course he is. 

He calls Max from Perth, the sunshine so strong that all Max can make out is a golden flare on his phone screen. 

“Keep your pants on!” Is the first thing he yells. “My mum and dad are here. Say hi mum and dad.” 

Max is grateful he’d worn one of Daniel’s shirts to bed. He runs a hand through his hair, trying to make himself presentable. “Hello, Grace and Joseph,” he greets them. 

“So formal!” Daniel mocks. “Mum, dad, this is my boyfriend Max.” 

Max blushes a brilliant red as Daniel turns the camera to face his parents. 

Grace is grinning at him. “Hello, Max. How are you? Those neighbours of yours behaving yet?” 

It’s so easy.

Max had been so worried about how they’d cope with their families, and with Daniel’s move to Renault, but actually, with Daniel in a team that he obviously thrives in, and with the direct competition removed, it makes their dynamic so much easier. 

Daniel abandons Max with his phone and his parents while he goes to piss, and when he returns, he’s wearing one of Max’s Red Bull jumpers - one he hadn’t even known Daniel had taken with him.

“I miss you loads,” he says. His parents must have gone. “How long is it, now?”

Max swipes at his phone screen to reveal the date. As if he even needs to look. “Two weeks, four days.” 

The sun has moved so Max can see Daniel’s face crease itself into a fond smile. He runs his thumb over his phone camera, so it’s like they’re touching. Max repeats the gesture. 

He rolls his eyes. “We’re disgusting.” 

“Yeah,” Daniel agrees. “But ya like it.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, those were lyrics [from accidentally in love](https://genius.com/Counting-crows-accidentally-in-love-lyrics), of Shrek fame. 
> 
> Endless thank yous to the people who made this possible - so the Daniel gc of course - and especially to Scottie and Katie and Allie who were the first people to read this and to scream at me in my google doc until i actually finished it. I love uuu <3 
> 
> and thank you to you for reading this. i don't know what i'm going to do with myself now it's over but here she is. 
> 
> Through adversity to the stars, babey!!!
> 
> (Because I can't stop at just one thing,[I made a playlist of songs I wrote this to](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6raW4nifNUqeLMxaKRYrXb?si=L7EdPQNwTHWZkt5hBTrV8Q))

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [tumblr](https://pierreswrists.tumblr.com/)


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